Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

UNITED DOMINIONS TRUST BILL [Lords]

Read the Third time and passed, with an amendment.

BRITISH RAILWAYS (No. 2) BILL

As amended, considered; to be read the Third time.

EASTBOURNE HARBOUR BILL [Lords] (By Order)

Order for consideration, as amended, read.

To be considered upon Tuesday next.

GREATER LONDON COUNCIL (MONEY) BILL

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [1st May],
That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill to reduce the total sum of £868,648,000 on page 9 of the Schedule by £83,000,000 by:

(1) reducing the sums mentioned in Item 10 of Part I of the Schedule (Page 6) as follows:

(a) in column 3, by leaving out "£187,700,000" and inserting "£137,700,000" and
(b) in column 4, by leaving out "£86,350,000" and inserting "£61,350,000": and

(2) reducing the sums mentioned in Item 25 in Part III of the Schedule (Page 9) as follows:

(a) in column 2, by leaving out "£60,000,000" and "£64,000,000" and inserting "£56,000,000" and "£60,000,000", and
(b) in column 3, by leaving out "£30,000,000" and "£32,000,000" and inserting "£26,000,000" and "£28,000,000".—[Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg.]

Debate further adjourned till Tuesday next.

Oral Answers to Questions — DEFENCE

Expenditure Reductions

Mr. Blaker: asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will give details of the extra defence cuts announced in the Budget.

Mr. Trotter: asked the Secretary of State for Defence whether the cuts in the Services' equipment and works programmes which are to form the bulk of the £110 million defence cuts announced by the Chancellor on 15th April will be made good by additional expenditure in the future.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the implications for defence of the reduction in expenditure by £100 million as a result of the Budget.

The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Roy Mason): I have nothing to add to what I told the House on 6th May.—[Vol. 891, c. 1230.]

Mr. Blaker: Do not these cuts make nonsense of the Secretary of State's grandiose claim that the Government's defence review was based on a fundamental and rational assessment of Britain's needs? Will he now give the House an assurance that there will be no further cuts of this kind?

Mr. Mason: The Secretary of State for Defence can never give that assurance in reply to the final question which the hon. Gentleman posed, and I should be foolish to do so. The main strategic decisions that we took on the defence review still stand. The cut for 1976–77 will not impinge upon that posture.

Mr. Trotter: Does the Secretary of State know what he proposes to cut? If he knows, why will he not tell us?

Mr. Mason: I told the hon. Gentleman and the rest of the House last week that, because of the cut of £110 million planned for 1976–77, it is likely that


equipment purchases will have to be adjusted, that works and building programmes will have to be deferred and that some job prospects will have to be lost.

Mr. Buck: Before the right hon. Gentleman presented his White Paper there were consultations with our allies. Were there any consultations with our allies before the further cuts were made?

Mr. Mason: Of course, there could not be consultation on this because it was a budgetary matter. However, our NATO allies were informed immediately after my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made his statement, and there will be opportunity for full discussions at the Defence Planning Council meeting next week.

Employment (Dockyards and Shipbuilding)

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what will be the effect of recently announced cuts in defence expenditure on employment in the Royal dockyards.

Mr. R. C. Mitchell: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what estimate he has made of the effect on employment in naval shipbuilding yards and naval dockyards of the recently announced additional £110 million reduction in defence spending.

The Under—Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Navy (Mr. Frank Judd): The reduction of £110 million in the defence budget for 1976–77 should not affect employment either in the yards building ships for the Royal Navy or in the Royal dockyards.

Mr. Hamilton: Does that mean that there will be no unemployment in Rosyth dockyard as a consequence of the recently announced cuts in defence expenditure? Does my hon. Friend recognise that more than 6,000 people are employed in this naval dockyard, which is one of the biggest employers in the whole of Fife? Has he made any estimate of the number of jobs that would be cut there if the nuclear programme were abandoned and the cuts recommended by some of my hon. Friends were implemented in full?

Mr. Judd: I assure my hon. Friend that we have quite enough practical problems

at present to deal with without indulging in hypothetical considerations of the kind he has outlined. It remains the policy of the Government to maintain dockyard capacity at about its present level and to use capacity which is temporarily released from warship refitting for other productive purposes.

Mr. Mitchell: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Can he assure me that the recent £110 million reduction in defence spending will not mean any unemployment or any reduction in the labour force in the Vosper Thornycroft dockyard in Southampton?

Mr. Judd: I assure my hon. Friend that the cut of £110 million is not expected to cause any reductions in the employment of the warship building firms in general, especially as there is a shortage of labour in the warship building industry at present. Royal Navy and overseas orders are likely to take up the available capacity in the main warship building yards for the foreseeable future.

Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: I know that the Minister must have gone into this matter very carefully. Can he give us an indication of what sort of other productive work he has in mind?

Mr. Judd: I presume that the hon. and gallant Gentleman is referring to the naval dockyards. In the foreseeable and immediate future, the yards will be fully taxed dealing with naval work.

Mrs. Winifred Ewing: Is it not the case that if the nuclear servicing at Rosyth were removed, Rosyth could once again be very competitive in the commercial servicing of ships?

Mr. Judd: Rosyth Dockyard is doing outstanding work in the service of the Fleet. I am sure that the whole House would like to pay a tribute to the workers at all levels who make this work possible.

Persian Gulf (Secretary of State's Visit)

Mr. Newens: asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on his recent visit to the Gulf area.

Mr. Mason: I visited Saudi Arabia and Oman. In Saudi Arabia I was received by King Khalid and had talks with him and leading members of the Government. In Oman I visited British


troops in the Dhofar region and had talks with Sultan Qaboos and the Deputy Minister of Defence.

Mr. Newens: Was there any discussion of the future use of Masirah or other bases in that area by the Americans? Did my right hon. Friend gain any impression of the attitude of the local people towards increased American involvement, particularly after Dr. Kissinger's statement earlier this year about the conditions in which the United States would use force in the case of an oil embargo? Would such involvement still be welcome?

Mr. Mason: My hon. Friend refers to Masirah, and not to my talks with Sultan Qaboos of Oman. Those talks were confidential, but I can say that the question of Masirah was not raised, neither have we had any detailed representations from the Americans for the use of Masirah.

Mr. Aitken: Will the right hon. Gentleman take this opportunity to clarify the statement he is reported to have made during his visit to the Gulf to the effect that in the foreseeable future British forces might be withdrawn from Oman? Is that withdrawal foreseen because of the imminent defeat of the Dhofar Marxist rebels or because he cannot appreciate the possibility of defeat by his own Left-wing rebels?

Mr. Mason: If the hon. Gentleman reads the defence review statement, he will see that we have no intention of withdrawing our forces in present circumstances. That still stands. Secondly, the Sultan's armed forces, with assistance from Her Majesty's Government and the Jordanians and Iranians, are having success and are driving the rebels back to the South Yemen frontier. They are professional and trained rebels from Communist sources crossing into the Dhofar province from the Yemen. Gradually, as we succeed and Omanisation takes place, our forces can be lessened in numbers.

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

Miss Fookes: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what communications he has had with NATO about the maintenance of the British commitment in the

light of the cuts in defence expenditure announced in the recent Budget Statement.

Mr. Mason: I have nothing to add to the reply which my hon. Friend the Minister of State for Defence gave to the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Mr. Trotter) on 28th April.—[Vol. 891, c. 15.]

Miss Fookes: Does the right hon. Gentleman expect that our allies will greet the latest cuts with a song in their heart, if I may coin a phrase?

Mr. Mason: I have had no response from my NATO colleagues since we transmitted to them the statement resulting from the Budget Statement. When I met the NATO Defence Ministers last week the question was not raised, but it may be discussed at the Defence Planning Council meeting next week.

Mr. Younger: As the Secretary of State said in his White Paper that NATO is the linchpin of our national security, and as NATO has made it very clear that it strongly disapproves of the cuts the right hon. Gentleman has already made in our defence budget, can he give an undertaking that the extra £110 million cut will in no sense fall on our commitment to NATO?

Mr. Mason: I tried to indicate in reply to an earlier question that the cut will not impinge upon our present defence posture and that NATO remains the linchpin of our security. By deferment of equipment procurement and by works and buildings programmes being deferred in the year in question, we may be able to save the money without interfering with our NATO commitment.

Mr. Wellbeloved: Have any of my right hon. Friend's NATO colleagues indicated to him their desire to bring their defence expenditure up to our level?

Mr. Mason: It is interesting that both the Italians and the French have decided to take a more prominent part in naval activities in the Mediterranean, where we had planned to withdraw.

Employment (Yorkshire and Humberside)

Mr. Woodall: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what further effects on


employment in the Yorkshire and Humberside Region he envisages because of the further cut in defence expenditure of £110 million.

The Minister of State for Defence (Mr. William Rodgers): No major projects will be cancelled as a result of these further savings, so their effects on employment in Yorkshire and Humberside should be minimised.

Mr. Woodall: Is my hon. Friend aware that that statement will be received with much pleasure, particularly by the Yorkshire aircraft workers in the Brough area, who have petitioned him and many, if not all, of the Yorkshire Members?

Mr. Rodgers: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As he knows, these are very difficult matters. We do our best to meet the need for saving at the same time as minimising the consequences for employment, but it is not easy.

Mr. Wall: As Brough is in my constituency, will the Minister confirm that it is the Government's policy to cause unemployment by not allowing Brough to compete for orders for Buccaneers for South Africa?

Mr. Rodgers: That is as topsy—turvy as it was intended to be. We shall do all we can to provide employment in the aircraft industry, consistent with the wider policy considerations that all Governments have followed from time to time.

Mr. Cryer: Can my hon. Friend give the House details of any assessment he has made of the improved export potential resulting from the defence cuts because our industrial structure is better able to compete with countries such as Japan, which do not squander resources on providing arms for export?

Mr. Rodgers: I wish that I could bring such comfort to my hon. Friend. I cannot do so at this stage, but I shall do my best to help him later.

Mr. Onslow: As the Government spokesman in another place told that House recently that if we could afford to buy the maritime Harrier now we would do so, can the Minister say whether failure to place an order for the maritime Harrier is because of economic constraints or uncertainty about defence needs? Will he confirm that if maritime Harrier orders

are not placed that will amount to another defence cut?

Mr. Rodgers: I gave a very careful assessment of the whole question of a decisison on the maritime Harrier in the defence debate on Wednesday evening. I should like to rest on that for the moment.

Tied Houses

Mr. Ridley: asked the Secretary of State for Defence if it is Government policy to continue to evict tenants from tied defence houses.

The Under—Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force (Mr. Brynmor John): We resort to eviction only when unavoidable and when all other expedients have failed.

Mr. Ridley: While I entirely understand the reasons why the Government must secure their own houses for Service personnel on such occasions, and why the hon. Gentleman has had to evict one of my constituents from a Service house, how can it be that the Government are at the same time making noises saying that other people should not have tied houses and that tied houses should be abolished in the private sector?

Mr. John: The hon. Gentleman will know that his constituent's case is to be heard in court for the first time on Thursday. Therefore it is not fair to say that the constituent has already been evicted.
On the question of tied houses, I would wish all other landlords of tied houses to be as considerate as the Services were towards their tenants, as the recent Shelter report on tied accommodation fairly points out.

Mr. R. C. Mitchell: Does not my hon. Friend think it ridiculous that some councils still insist on the Services taking a court order against their tenants before they will rehouse them in council accommodation? Will my hon. Friend have discussions with the local authority associations to see whether there is a way round this long and arduous procedure?

Mr. John: It is unfortunate that the stress for tenants who are likely to lose their accommodation should be heightened by insistence on court orders or even, in some cases, warrants of possession before consideration is given to


rehousing. My right hon. Friend will shortly be issuing a circular on the question to local government. I hope that the circular will be helpful in dealing with the point my hon. Friend has made.

Milan Anti-tank Weapon

Mr. Terry Walker: asked the Secretary of State for Defence whether it is his intention to purchase for the British Army the Milan anti—tank weapon from the French.

Mr. William Rodgers: We have made no decision.

Mr. Walker: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. I hope he will resist any pressure put on him by the Chiefs of Staff to buy Milan when we have systems developed and produced in this country and when it is vital to the workers in constituencies such as mine that they are proceeded with in preference to buying weapons from another country.

Mr. Rodgers: I must remind my hon. Friend that we cannot achieve overall defence savings—I know that he wants us to go further—unless we are very hardheaded about our decisions on equipment procurement. I set out last Wednesday evening, I think to the general approval of the House, the considerations which we must bear in mind. Certainly the question of employment is one, but operational necessity and timing are others.

Mr. Pattie: Is the Minister aware that Milan has serious limitations in that its warhead is smaller than that of Vigilant, which has been in service for more than 11 years, it has difficulties about nighttime operation and it is vulnerable to counter-measures? Will he consider whether purchase of the weapon would undermine the credibility of our own Swingfire in export markets?

Mr. Rodgers: If I had to choose between the assessment of the hon. Gentleman and that of my advisers, I would choose the assessment of my advisers.

Mr. MacFarquhar: In this whole matter of choosing between foreign and domestic military equipment, will my hon. Friend confirm that his Department still has greater confidence in the Rapier antiaircraft missile than in the Franco-German Roland? Will he confirm or deny

the report in the Sunday Times last Sunday that a very important sale of the Rapier missile to the United States was lost in competition with Roland as a result of the failure of the British Government to exercise any kind of pressure?

Mr. Rodgers: I can answer "Yes" to both questions. We have very great faith in the capacity of the British guided weapons industry, but I must stress again that many considerations come into the purchase of this kind of equipment. I do not believe that the cause of our Armed Services and the country is best served by remarks which are unreasonably critical about equipment which the Armed Services are considering for purchase whatever its origin.

Mr. Goodhart: Does not the falling value of the pound make it even more important to get valuable offset agreements if we are to purchase foreign military equipment?

Mr. Rodgers: I think that the word used by the hon. Gentleman in the debate the other evening was "reciprocity". I entirely agree with him.

Malaysia

Mr. Christopher Price: asked the Secretary of State for Defence how many British Forces and ancillary personnel are at present in Malaysia.

Mr. William Rodgers: There are about 130 members of the British Forces and ancillary personnel in Malaysia at present, of whom some 80 are on training courses.

Mr. Price: In view of the increasing troubles in Northern Malaysia, which could flow over into Thailand, and of the importance of the British not getting mixed up in them, will my hon. Friend give an absolute guarantee that no members of the Special Air Services Regiment are engaged in activities in either of those two countries?

Mr. Rodgers: I share my hon. Friend's very proper concern that we should not get involved in operations of this kind which are the responsibility of the Malaysian authorities. I think he will find that those we have in Malaysia at the moment are comparable to the sort of training teams we have elsewhere in the world.

Sir David Renton: In the event of the Malaysian Government requesting our help, would it be forthcoming?

Mr. Rodgers: That is a hypothetical question.

RAF Display Teams

Mr. Watkinson: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what plans he has to cut back the activities of display teams in the RAF.

Mr. John: I have no plans at present further to curtail the activities of the RAF display teams beyond the significant reductions imposed last year by the need to conserve manpower, money and fuel.

Mr. Watkinson: Will my hon. Friend say how many such display teams there are and what is their total cost? Will he confirm that the cost of running the Red Arrows last year was more than £800,000? One appreciates the technical skill of the Red Arrows, but is it advisable at the present time to continue their flying at that cost? Do these display teams have any significant effect upon recruitment?

Mr. John: Six flying teams are at present organising and there is one ground display team. As for recruiting and value for money, without going into the precise costs at this stage I can assure my hon. Friend that we are satisfied that such displays of great expertise have a significant effect on recruiting and are worth while. However, we are always looking at ways of securing greater value for money.

Mr. Costain: Does the Minister appreciate that his announcement is very welcome particularly in areas which have had the benefit of seeing these displays including events on the coast? Does he agree that it does a good deal for the RAF's prestige and a good deal to encourage youth to join the Royal Air Force?

Mr. John: We believe that the exercise is worth while in terms of public relations for the Royal Air Force and in terms of recruitment.

Hawkswing Anti-tank Missile

Mr. Pattie: asked the Secretary of State for Defence whether he proposes

to equip the British Army with the Hawk-swing anti-tank missile.

Mr. William Rodgers: We have made no decision.

Mr. Pattie: Does the Minister agree that there is a tremendous potential in export markets for the Hawkswing allied to Lynx helicopters, as there is for the Sea Skua weapons system? Does he agree that the Hawkswing is far superior to the French rival system Hot? Would it not be a good idea for the British Army to place its order for Hawkswing so that we can look would-be purchasers in the eye when we are asked why we have not ordered it for our own purposes?

Mr. Rodgers: I agree about the export potential for Hawkswing. I do not want to enter into an argument about the competitive merits of different systems. Our concern must be, bearing in mind our operational needs, to buy the right weapons at the right time and at the right price. These are the considerations which must govern any decisions we make.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: Does the Minister agree that it is important that a decision should be made? Is he aware that the general impression of those in the field who know is certainly in favour of Milan?

Mr. Rodgers: I do not think that the hon. Member's supplementary question is directly related to the options on this Question. I agree, however, that we must make the decisions as soon as possible bearing in mind all the considerations I have set out, and, of course, and very properly, the consequences for our industry of a whole series of decisions which are pending.

Textile Purchases

Mr. Hoyle: asked the Secretary of State for Defence how many applications he has received for the post of consultant to progress textile contracts in South-East Asia.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Army (Mr. Robert C. Brown): None. No such post exists or is contemplated.

Mr. Hoyle: I am pleased to hear that answer. Does my hon. Friend agree


that there is a need to look at defence contracts, particularly in the light of the recession in the British textile industry, to make sure that as close to 100 per cent. of orders as possible is placed with British textile firms?

Mr. Brown: While I very much agree with the hon. Member—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I must ask the Minister to face this way so that I can hear too.

Mr. Brown: I apologise, Mr. Speaker. I agree with my hon. Friend's statement, but I cannot be drawn on the subject since Question No. 17 is related to this matter.

Multi-Rôle Combat Aircraft

Mr. Robin F. Cook: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what plans he has to consult with the Italian and German Governments on the progress of the MRCA.

Mr. William Rodgers: We remain in constant touch with our partners in the project.

Mr. Cook: Has my hon. Friend taken note that both our partners have substantially reduced the number of aircraft in proposed orders since the start of the project? Is there no message for the United Kingdom in these reductions? Does my hon. Friend concur with the estimate of the Controller of Aircraft that the development cost of this project will be 25 per cent. more than would have been the case with a national project? What political and diplomatic advantage does my hon. Friend see in this collaboration to offset the additional cost?

Mr. Rodgers: I am certainly aware that there were some reductions in the earlier stages, but I am sure my hon. Friend will agree that there have been none lately. We have to make up our own mind on the issue and decide on the number of aircraft we want to purchase. No final decision is required for at least a year. I am not aware of the statement which has been attributed to the Controller of Aircraft, but here again we have to weigh the advantages of collaborative projects, which the House has wanted over many years, against the prospects of going alone. Standardisation is important and in the long run what we are doing is the

best way of ensuring the sort of economy in defence expenditure which I hope we all want to see.

Colonel Sir Harwood Harrison: Does not the Minister agree that this aircraft, which is the product of three countries combined, is being eagerly looked forward to by many members of the RAF?

Mr. Rodgers: Yes, I think there is very great confidence in it.

Mr. Dalyell: Why is the MRCA not to appear at the Paris Air Show?

Mr. Rodgers: There was never any decision that it should. The most important thing is to get this aircraft through its development stages as fast as possible. I think that that is in our mutual interest.

Mr. Goodhew: Will the Minister bear in mind that, quite apart from the desirability of these collaborative projects, it was a Labour Government which cancelled the TSR2, abandoned the Anglo-French variable geometry aircraft and cancelled the F111A? If anything goes wrong with the MRCA now in the form of the Government going back on their intentions, the RAF will have been without a major aircraft for a very long time.

Mr. Rodgers: The hon. Member seems to want to live in the past. I have given a very firm commitment about our interests in providing the RAF with the aircraft it requires in the future.

Mr. Noble: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what is the purchasing policy of his Department with regard to textile goods.

Mr. Robert C. Brown: Our purchasing policy for textile goods follows our general purchasing policy of calling for competitive tenders wherever possible with the primary objective of obtaining what is needed and getting value for money, while at the same time having regard to industrial objectives.

Mr. Noble: Does my hon. Friend accept that the recent decision, announced in the Press, to set up a quality control department in Hong Kong dismayed the workers in the textile industry in the north-west of England? Does he accept that while his Department may be buying these goods cheaply, the net cost to the


Exchequer of redundacy payments and unemployment benefits, and of seeking to close mills throughout the country, makes these the economics of the madhouse?

Mr. Brown: I would have hoped that the appointment of a serving professional and technology officer for a limited period of two years would not have caused any alarm among textile workers. I sincerely hope that we can keep this matter in perspective. The total Ministry of Defence purchase of textiles amounts to £33 million per year. The purchases abroad account for £1·7 million, or 4 per cent. of this total. However, I emphasise that only ½ per cent.—that is, £160,000 worth—was bought direct from overseas suppliers. In terms of textile imports into this country, the Ministry of Defence accounts for 0·2 per cent.

Employment Redundancies

Mr. Golding: asked the Secretary of State for Defence how many workers will be declared redundant as a consequence of the recent additional cuts in defence expenditure.

Mr. William Rodgers: The extent of redundancies amongst defence contractors at any one time must depend upon management decisions, but we do not expect the recent further savings to affect significantly the employment situation.

Mr. Golding: Is my hon. Friend aware that many hon. Members on this side will welcome the statement which he has just made? Will he further resist pressures from some of his hon. Friends to increase the level of unemployment arising from the defence cuts?

Mr. Rodgers: My right hon. Friend, other Ministers and I have consistently said that none of us can have it both ways. If we are to have substantial savings on defence expenditure, for good and sufficient reasons, we must not try to persuade others that there is not a price to pay in a potential substantial loss of job opportunities.

Mr. Onslow: As the Minister stated, the Secretary of State has been forthright about this, and the Government have told us that there are no easy alternatives, such as manufacturing spin driers, caravans or filing systems, on which to employ

people who lose their jobs as a result of the defence cuts. Will the Minister consider publishing a White Paper and spelling this out, for the benefit of those of his hon. Frinds below the Gangway who are either too stupid or dishonest to explain this to their constituents?

Mr. Rodgers: Those remarks were totally uncalled for. This is an area in which strong feelings are aroused and genuine opinions are held. The hon. Gentleman knows that there is no need to publish the sort of White Paper he suggests. I think that we should continue to discuss these matters calmly in the House, as most of us choose to do.

Mr. Newens: Is my hon. Friend aware that those of us who have pressed for defence cuts are every bit as concerned as others about the need to fight unemployment? Will he make it clear that it would be absolute madness for us to maintain defence contracts merely to keep people in work without any consideration of why this was done?

Mr. Rodgers: I think that there is a point of view, and a sober point of view, which the House may feel is right, that we should never seek simply to maintain employment if it serves no adequate purpose. The need is to redeploy skills in areas where they are principally needed.

Mr. Grylls: When considering his defence cuts, will the Minister bear in mind the frightening effectiveness of the Soviet weapons displayed in the 1973 Middle East war, especially by the Egyptians and the Syrians? This is an important matter. Will he ensure, in view of this modern weaponry now held by the Russians, that he does not cut down on research and development on the most modern weapons? That is an important side. Will the Minister ensure that that is maintained?

Mr. Rodgers: I agree entirely that it is an important side. I am not sure whether a large amount of employment is directly involved in this.

Mr. Corbett: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what arrangements he is making designed to ensure that civilian workers displaced as a result of the defence review are helped to transfer to productive civilian jobs; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. William Rodgers: Wherever possible, reductions in Ministry of Defence civilian personnel will be achieved by normal wastage, but for those made redundant every effort will be made to provide alternative employment. We expect defence contractors to recognise similar responsibilities.

Mr. Corbett: May I invite my hon. Friend to go further? Will he confirm that some of the largest trade unions with members employed in the defence industry are in favour of substantially cutting arms spending provided that alternative civilian work is made available? [Interruption.] Ignoring the guffaws of the gunboat diplomatists on the benches opposite, will my hon. Friend accept the responsibility for his Department and do what he can to ensure that there is a phased switch from defence to civilian work to ensure that people are put into work which can aid our national recovery and help exports?

Mr. William Rodgers: I agree with my hon. Friend that some trade union leaders, though not all, want to see further substantial defence cuts. It is nevertheless true that a number of their shop stewards visit other Defence Ministers and me telling us about the difficult consequences of reduced defence spending. These are issues in which we must show a sense of balance and proportion. I ask for recognition of the fact that if we are to make major defence savings we cannot overnight guarantee other job opportunities in place of those which are lost.

Mr. Churchill: What is to be the future of the more than 1,000 highly skilled aircraft production workers in the Hawker Siddeley Woodford and Chadderton plants who will be made redundant as a result of the Government's defence cuts? What alternative employment will be provided for them? Certain of the Minister's hon. Friends below the Gangway have suggested caravan production. How does that square with the 25 per cent. VAT rate?

Mr. William Rodgers: I hope that the redundancies will not amount to the figure mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. As he knows, that depends a great deal on management decisions, and I cannot anticipate what they may be.

Mr. George Rodgers: Will my hon. Friend advise the House what consultations have taken place with trade unions, management, the Department of Industry and the Department of Employment about the prospects of providing alternative employment?

Mr. William Rodgers: Following my right hon. Friend's statement of 3rd December 1974, we made it clear that we were willing to receive representations from management and trade unions about the likely consequences which would follow. We have received a number of those representations. I saw the representatives of Hawker Siddeley Aviation and discussed with them what best could be done. We shall continue to lend our services, and those of the Department of Employment and the Department of Industry will also be available to discuss such a range of alternative jobs as may be available during difficult times.

Mr. Younger: The hon. Gentleman has asked us to discuss this matter calmly. Would it not be in keeping with that request, and much more straightforward for those involved, for him to say clearly that the massive defence cuts imposed by the Government will throw thousands of people out of work? Would not the Government do better to admit it?

Mr. William Rodgers: No, it would not be better to say that, because we have made it clear—[Interruption.] The House should listen carefully to this, because this could cause real anxiety where we should seek to avoid it. We have said plainly—we said it in the White Paper—that as a consequence of the cuts then made there might be 10,000 job opportunities at risk in the next five years. How many may become redundant we cannot tell, because that depends upon alternative work which may come forward and upon management decisions. Nevertheless I think it is wrong to exaggerate what I have always conceded to be a difficult problem.

Disaster Relief

Mr. Edwin Wainwright: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what consideration he has given to the peaceful uses of the Armed Forces on such occasions as when public disasters occur in the United Kingdom or elsewhere.

Mr. Robert C. Brown: The provision of Service personnel and equipment, if called upon in the event of a disaster or emergency, is a recognised means of helping the civil community both in the United Kingdom and overseas.

Mr. Wainwright: Will my hon. Friend give an indication of the most recent cases of involvement of Her Majesty's Forces in civil disasters? Will he also give consideration in some of our units to the setting up of special teams trained to cope with severe disasters such as at Flixborough and the London Moorgate Underground train disaster?

Mr. Brown: Help was given during the heavy flooding in East Anglia and the Home Counties in November last year. At Flixborough we provided very quickly bedding and mattresses. At Moorgate we provided overalls and a bath unit for the emergency services. Overseas, help was given in Belize and Honduras after hurricane Fifi in 1974. I have noted my hon. Friend's point about special training.

Hydrographic Surveys

Mr. Alan Lee Williams: asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on which hydro-graphical surveys are being undertaken and where.

Mr. Judd: Full details of hydrographic surveys are given in the annual report by the Hydrographer of the Navy. Priority is given to surveys in the waters around the United Kingdom. These surveys are made for defence and commercial shipping purposes and special attention is also being given to the requirements of our energy programme, for example in surveys of tow-out routes for moving rigs.

Mr. Williams: I thank my hon. Friend for his reply. Is he able to give a progress report on this important work and tell us the financial implications?

Mr. Judd: The work of the Hydro-graphic Study Group has been completed and its report is under consideration, but the House will appreciate that I cannot at this stage anticipate the decisions which may be taken as a result of that report. The finance for hydrographic work not for defence purposes is a matter for interdepartmental consultation, but clearly it

cannot be financed out of the limited defence budget.

Mr. Warren: Does the Minister agree that the resources available for hydro-graphic survey are totally inadequate? Will he please consult the Secretary of State for Energy, who will draw his attention to the fact that most of the waters around this country have not been surveyed this century?

Mr. Judd: The fleet of the Hydrographer of the Royal Navy is manned by professional men of the highest calibre and they are meeting more than adequately the programme which has been provided for them. The size of the programme in the future is a matter for consultation between various Government Departments.

United States Polaris Bases

Mr. Cryer: asked the Secretary of State for Defence when he anticipates that the United States Polaris bases will be closed.

Mr. Mason: As I stated in my answer to my hon. Friend on 11th March—[Vol. 888, c. 255.]—we may be able to initiate multilateral disarmament negotiations once the conference on security and co-operation in Europe and the talks on mutual and balanced force reductions are concluded. It may then be possible to seek the removal of the United States Polaris base as a first step in such multilateral negotiations.

Mr. Cryer: Does my right hon. Friend accept that the trade union and labour movement is concerned that these weapons represent a grave threat to the safety and peace of the country? As he is devoted to carrying out the terms of the election manifesto, as I am, will he use his best endeavours to ensure that, starting from the basis of the multilateral negotiations he has mentioned, we shall get rid of these Polaris bases as soon as we possibly can?

Mr. Mason: Yes. My hon. Friend should not propagandise on the first point. If there were a conflict between East and West, even if there were no nuclear weapons based on English soil—

Mrs. Bain: Nonsense.

Mrs. Winifred Ewing: rose—

Mr. Mason: —or in the United Kingdom, we should not be able to escape any launching of nuclear weapons from abroad. The country would be a vast base, a feeder to the Continent, full of conventional weapons, and irrespective of whether there was a nuclear base here we would be hit. My hon. Friend and I, as well as my other hon. Friends, fought the election on a manifesto commitment which I am honestly carrying out. Starting from the basis of the multilateral disarmament negotiations, we shall seek the removal of American Polaris bases from Britain. That is the commitment, and that is what we are empowered to do.

Mr. Kershaw: Are not these bases in part an element of our alliance with our friends of the United States? If they were moved, would not the only people to rejoice be Russia and Labour supporters below the Gangway?

Mr. Mason: The bases certainly form part of the alliance, yes, and it is right that until we have concluded the other two major negotiations in Europe we should maintain them. Only thereafter, in alliance with our American friends, shall we be prepared to start multilateral talks on their removal.

Mrs. Ewing: As the Minister is under the impression that there are some nuclear bases on English soil and he does not seem to mind that, may we offer him the Polaris base for transfer to the River Thames, if he has no moral objection, as the Scottish National Party has? Is not the Polaris deterrent simply old scrap iron now? It is nothing but a danger, particularly to the industrial belt of central Scotland.

Mr. Mason: I do not think that the countries belonging to the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union regard it as scrap. They regard it as a real deterrent, and because of it we have managed to maintain between East and West 30 years of peace.

Mrs. Ewing: Bring it down here.

Oral Answers to Questions — COMMONWEALTH PRIME MINISTERS' CONFERENCE

Mr. Ashley: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on

the results of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference.

Dr. Phipps: asked the Prime Minister what discussions he had with the Heads of Commonwealth Governments concerning Great Britain's continued membership of the European Economic Community.

Mr. Wyn Roberts: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): Much of our time was spent on economic matters and on the problems of Southern Africa, and on both a substantial measure of agreement was reached. I have already presented to the House a White Paper setting out in detail the proposals on primary commodities which I put to my Commonwealth colleagues. The outcome of the discussions on these and other subjects is described in the communiqué issued at the end of the meeting and published as a White Paper today.
I did not raise the question of Britain's membership of the EEC and there was therefore no mention of it in the communiqué but after the matter had been raised by a number of Prime Ministers it was agreed unanimously that the Prime Minister of Jamaica, as chairman of the meeting, should issue a separate statement recording that all the other Commonwealth Heads of Government had placed on record their firm opinion that Commonwealth interests are in no way prejudiced by our membership. His statement added that many Heads of Government had emphasised that it was of positive advantage to their countries that Britain should remain a member of the EEC: and that the strong view had also been expressed that British membership was of value in encouraging the Community to be outward-looking towards the rest of the world.

Mr. Ashley: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on a striking achievement in Jamaica, but is he aware that there is still deep concern about the exclusion from the Lomé Convention of many developing countries, such as India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka? Will he convey that deep concern to our partners in the EEC and urge them to include


those Commonwealth members in their assistance programme?

The Prime Minister: I thank my hon. Friend. In my speech to the conference, which has been published as a White Paper, I said that we hoped to build on the Lomé Convention so as to cover the countries of Asia to which my hon. Friend has referred. He will see from the communiqué that the Commonwealth Heads of Government supported the extension of the Lomé Convention—which they warmly welcomed—to cover the relevant countries of Asia.

Mr. Roberts: Would the Prime Minister care to expand on his statement and tell us what was the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' attitude towards our membership of the EEC? In particular, will he comment on Mr. Gough Whitlam's view that if Britain were to withdraw she would be in danger of lapsing into the position of Spain in the seventeenth century?

The Prime Minister: I have said, and I repeat, that my right hon. Friend and I did not seek any statement, and we said that we did not consider that one was necessary. Nevertheless, the Commonwealth Prime Ministers pushed on with it. Various Prime Ministers at outside Press conferences as well as in the conference meeting expressed the views I have recorded. Mr. Gough Whitlam expressed them particularly strongly. I do not go along with the remarks made by Mr. Gough Whitlam which have just been quoted, but I go along with the rest of what he said. I emphasised there, as I have emphasised in this country, that, inside or outside the EEC, Britain's future depends upon our own efforts and our own restraint, and the other matters are important to us but not decisive.

Dr. Phipps: I welcome the statement of my right hon. Friend as regards the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' acceptance of our position in the EEC and their reluctance to see us become the Albania of the West. Will he, however, tell the House what steps he intends to take within the EEC in particular to see that the Commonwealth countries of Asia are included within the Lomé Convention?

The Prime Minister: I do not remember Albania being mentioned at any point

during the conference, although I think the Prime Minister of Malta mentioned Libya once or twice. As regards the extension of the Lomé Convention, I tried to answer that question in response to the supplementary question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley). The position is that we and the Commonwealth support the extension of the benefits of the Lomé Convention as regards access to the EEC of the Asian countries. It is also recognised, as I told the conference, that negotiations in Lomé and outside Lomé have begun. An extension, for example, of the general system of preferences would benefit all the Asian countries.

Mr. David Steel: Is the Prime Minister aware that many of us welcome the restoration of identity of views with the African Heads of State as regards policy in Southern Africa? Has any member of the Commonwealth indicated a view against British membership of the Community? There was a suggestion that the Ugandan Government had reservations.

The Prime Minister: As regards Southern Africa I welcome what the hon. Gentleman says. It is very important. This was by far the best Commonwealth Conference that any of us can remember. I think that was so mainly because the situation in Southern Africa and the prospects there have changed. As regards the question of whether any Commonwealth countries have reservations about our membership of the Community, the answer is "Certainly not". Quite apart from discussion round the table during the communiqué session to which I have referred, I and my right hon. Friend made it our business to talk to the heads of every Commonwealth delegation as to their attitude on the matter. As we know, the President of Uganda did not see fit to be present in the circumstances of this meeting. Therefore. I was not able to seek his views. I was, however, able to seek the views of the head of the Ugandan delegation. I think the hon. Gentleman can be sure that the head of the Ugandan delegation was speaking only within the general context of the President's policy and not outside it.

Mr. Ashton: In his main answer my right hon. Friend said that the question


of the Common Market was not included in the final communiqué because he did not raise it. Why did he not raise it? Why was it not part of the communiqué? Why was it not discussed officially?

The Prime Minister: I am sorry if I have disappointed my hon. Friend. The Common Market was discussed officially at the conference on the initiative of other Minister and Heads of Government. I think that was right. I was certainly not going to ask them for a statement on this matter.

Mr. Skinner: Oh!

The Prime Minister: I understand the interruption of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). It was always possible that some would say that they did not want to interfere in a matter on which the British electorate are taking a decision. Indeed, the Prime Minister of Guyana, who took the initiative in raising this matter, was very much supported. His message, strengthened by the President of Tanzania, the Prime Minister of Canada and others, said that they were not in any way trying to interfere with the voice of the British people expressed through the ballot box, but they felt it right to state what the position of the Commonwealth was as it affected their own countries and the Commonwealth as a whole.

Mrs. Thatcher: Is the Prime Minister aware that most of us welcome very warmly the spontaneous initiative of the Prime Ministers in their statement on the EEC? Secondly, is he aware that we welcome his initiative on commodities at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference? Thirdly, as economic discussions played quite a large part in the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference and as we have certain problems in that direction at home, is it the right hon. Gentleman's intention, before the House rises, to make a statement about the general economic position of this country or to ask his right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make such a statement?

The Prime Minister: I am most grateful to the right hon. Lady both for her comments on the voluntary and unsought decision of the Commonwealth on the EEC and particularly for what she said

about the initiative on commodities. It was at first thought that that initiative might face heavy weather because of the very strong views of some of the Third World countries, which rather suggested that they wanted to pull down the whole of the world's economic machinery, including the IMF and the Bank. It would take a lot of time before anything was found to replace it. There was, however, very warm support and the matter received a warm wind in the communiqué as I may say it did in Washington when we discussed the matter there. The right hon. Lady is right: a very important part of the conference was on economic discussion and on Southern Africa. As regards the economic situation in this country. I understand that the usual channels have had a discussion this morning I suggested that they might do so—and that we shall be debating the matter in the House next week if the right hon. Lady agrees.

Oral Answers to Questions — ZAMBIA

Mr. Rifkind: asked the Prime Minister whether he will make an official visit to Lusaka.

The Prime Minister: I have at present no plans to do so, Sir.

Mr. Rifkind: When the Prime Minister last met President Kaunda, will he tell the House whether he discussed the question of compensation to Botswana and Mozambique in the event of their imposing sanctions against Rhodesia? Will the right hon. Gentleman comment on Press reports that Britain has agreed to provide the bulk of the foreign exchange requirements of Mozambique resulting from the imposition of sanctions? Will he state what amount the Government envisage will be required?

The Prime Minister: In the first place, I reject the phrase that the hon. Gentleman used—I am sure that he did not mean it technically—about compensation. We did not talk about compensation. What we said was that, in the situation which is likely to occur after the last few days of June when the new Government of Mozambique take over, we are prepared as a Government to give aid to the economic position in Mozambique. We are also prepared to consider aid in relation to Botswana and to Zambia. And


we discussed the matter with President Kaunda. We are prepared to do that. It is not a question of compensation. We did not say that we would provide the bulk of their foreign exchange. We will do it as part of what I think will be the United Nations programme. The hon. Gentleman will also be aware that when we were asked whether we were prepared to provide either arms or money for guerrilla activities, my right hon. Friend and I gave a flat rejection. We said that we would in no circumstances be involved in such activities.

Mr. Mark Hughes: Will my right hon. Friend indicate whether any of the 10 experts indicated in the communiqué have yet been named and what sort of timetable is envisaged for the report of their deliberations on further economic co-operation?

The Prime Minister: Yes, discussions are going on about the names. We have made suggestions. Certainly Britain will be represented on this very important committee. The chairman has been named. I do not think that the remainder have been named publicly, but the relevant Governments, on a representative basis, are being asked to suggest names. I hope that there will be a statement in the near future. The terms of reference of the committee are set out in the communiqué.

Mr. Ian Lloyd: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many people find it most poignant and astonishing that when they would have expected him to be concentrating the whole of his abilities, such as they are, on constructing a rescue package for the United Kingdom, he seems to have spent much of his time in Jamaica constructing a destructive package for Rhodesia? Surely something better than that should be done.

The Prime Minister: I think that the hon. Gentleman is out of sympathy with the general position taken by all parties in this House on the importance of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is a unique institution which I thought was supported by everyone. I remember the great part played not only by some of our own previous Prime Ministers but by Mr. Harold Macmillan in the creation of the Commonwealth as it is today. It is remarkable that we can still, because of

the former British connection, meet and express views representing every region and ocean of the world on every kind of economic development. I am disapopinted that the hon. Gentleman has not realised the importance of this.
This was the best Commonwealth Conference that any of us can remember since the Commonwealth Conferences started. [Interruption.] That is worth saying again so that the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Churchill) can understand it. I cannot accept the view of the hon. Member for Havant and Waterloo (Mr. Lloyd) about the situation here. That matter will be debated next week and any relevant comments that the hon. Gentleman has, which I very much doubt, will no doubt be taken into account by the House and discounted at their full value.

Oral Answers to Questions — SOUTH-EAST ASIA

Mr. Trotter: asked the Prime Minister whether he intends to visit South-East Asia.

The Prime Minister: I have at present no plans to do so, Sir.

Mr. Trotter: Will the Prime Minister tell the House how it is that on behalf of the British people he has not expressed one word of condemnation of the naked aggression by the Communists in Vietnam against the South Vietnamese?

The Prime Minister: I discussed the situation with President Ford. There was no disagreement between us in any of our discussions. My right hon. Friend also spoke to Dr. Kissinger in my presence on these matters. We expressed exactly the same view privately and publicly. If the hon. Gentleman wants to be more American than the Americans, perhaps he will tell us what he would have liked us to have said.

Mr. Christopher Price: If my right hon. Friend visits South-East Asia, he will probably have to go to Singapore. Will he convey to Lee Kuan Yew how much he has raised the status of both himself and his country by his forthright remarks to Congress in the United States of America? Will he also inform him that he would raise his prestige even further if he were to let out of gaol those people whom we put in gaol 13 years


ago when Her Majesty's Government had responsibility for internal affairs in Singapore?

The Prime Minister: On the first part of the question, the Prime Minister of Singapore always makes a tremendous impression on Commonwealth Conferences because of his deep perception of world affairs. The last conference was no exception. I agree with my hon. Friend on the second part of the question.

CHRYSLER LIMITED (DISPUTE)

Mr. Madel: (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for Employment if he will make a statement on the current dispute in the Chrysler Company.

The Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Michael Foot): Production workers at Chrysler Ltd.'s Stoke engine plant at Coventry began strike action on 9th May. The strike continues and threatens employment at the Ryton and Linwood plants.
The dispute has arisen in the course of negotiations for a new annual wage settlement due for implementation from 1st July. A claim has been made for increases of £15 per week and a mass meeting of the employees concerned on 5th May voted to strike unless the company made a cash offer in response to their claim by 9th May. Subsequently the shop stewards sought an offer of £8 per week to provide a basis on which negotiations could continue and for a resumption of work.
On 8th May the company made proposals for employee participation in the management of the company, including representation on the board and for profit sharing. The company also disclosed plans for new products. At a meeting with the shop stewards and full-time officers of the unions principally concerned on 10th May, the company discussed these proposals further and urged that negotiations should begin immediately on them. If there were an immediate resumption of work and progress were made on plans for employee participation, the company undertook to make an offer in response to the wage claim on 23rd May.
The outcome of these discussions was reported by the full-time officers to a

meeting of all the stewards yesterday. I understand that the officials concerned sought to persuade the stewards to accept the company's undertaking and call for a return to work. The stewards, however, decided that the strike should continue. A mass meeting of the workers at the plant has been arranged for Thursday.
As the new wage settlement is not due until 1st July and the company has undertaken to make an offer next week, I very much hope that there will be an early resumption of work to allow negotiations to continue on the company's proposals.

Mr. Madel: I am sure that the whole House is glad to see the Secretary of State for Employment back after his illness.
As this dispute is potentially the most damaging that Chrysler has ever suffered, will the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether there have been informal consultations between the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service and the parties to the dispute? May we take it that, if necessary and if there should be difficulty after Thursday's meeting, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service will convene a very early meeting between all parties to try to bring about an early solution to this damaging dispute?

Mr. Foot: Both sides, the trade unions and the employers, know very well of the readiness of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service to come in and assist, if it can, at any period either now or later. Efforts are being made to overcome the strike. I will not attempt to answer the hon. Gentleman's question directly, because the precise moment when the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service might best help is not known. But, as I said, other efforts are being made to end the strike. I agree that it is a most damaging strike. It injures those who are on strike and those who are not on strike, and puts in jeopardy the jobs of all of them. Therefore, I very much hope that there will be an early end to the strike.

Mr. Edelman: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, irrespective of the merits of the wage claim, a prolonged strike at the Chrysler works would be suicidal in view of the possibility that this company, under pressure, might even collapse? In


those circumstances, will he follow the initiative taken by the Prime Minister and, as early as possible, call a tripartite meeting of representatives of the Government, the trade unions and the employers with a view to taking up the new initiative by the company within the general context of participation and simultaneous consideration of the legitimate wage claim by the workers?

Mr. Foot: The tripartite discussions, to which the Prime Minister referred in his statement on Sunday, are another matter and cover a much wider sphere altogether. But I assure my hon. Friend that efforts are being made—in particular, by the union leaders concerned—to assist in overcoming the strike. We wish to do everything possible to find a solution. I agree with everything my hon. Friend said about the potential damage that continuance of the strike could do.

Mr. Hayhoe: It is clear that the message from both sides of this House to the mass meeting on Thursday is that the workers should return to work. That is the hope of the Opposition just as much as of hon. Members supporting the Government.
Is the Secretary of State aware that the participation proposals which have been made, albeit at a time very close to the dispute arising, nevertheless deserve most careful study? Again, the plea of the whole House is that this should be done and that this unnecessary, damaging and destructive strike should be brought to an end as soon as possible.

Mr. Foot: Certainly we want the company's proposals about participation discussed. Indeed, the workers at Chrysler have not said that they do not want to discuss these proposals. There should be no mistake about that. But it is necessary that the strike, which is already causing serious damage, should be brought to an end. That is what the union leaders and officials concerned have urged upon all the workers there. I am sure that it is right for this House to give its full backing to the plea that they have made in that respect.

Mr. Park: Whilst I agree with the advice for a return to work at Chrysler,

may I ask whether my right hon. Friend and the House are aware that skilled machinists at that factory draw less money now than the men who empty the dustbins?

Mr. Foot: I will not go into the individual merits of the dispute, but I am sure that the best way to get a new wage settlement is for the strike to be brought to an end.

Mr. Teddy Taylor: Is the Secretary of State aware that some views have been expressed that if this strike ruins the company and it goes bust the Government will simply come in with another rescue operation? So far that has not been the case. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it would help to resolve the strike if the Government made their position clear and the company clearly acquainted its employees with its serious financial state?

Mr. Foot: I will not answer the question in the terms in which the hon. Gentleman has put it, because I do not think that would be advantageous. There is no doubt on either side of the House as to what we think about the strike. We certainly trust that that will be taken account of by the shop stewards and all concerned. We hope that they will take account of what is said in this House just as we would have preferred them to have taken account of what has already been said to them on the subject by union leaders and officials. There is not the slightest doubt about the dangers for the company as a whole, for the jobs of workers at Chrysler and, indeed, for the jobs of many other workers as well. We hope that all these facts will be taken into account by those who are at the moment on strike.

BILL PRESENTED

BRITISH LEYLAND BILL

Mr. Secretary Benn, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Secretary Foot, Mr. Secretary Shore, Mr. Secretary Ross, Mr. Secretary John Morris, Mr. Attorney-General, Mr. Gregor Mackenzie, and Mr. Michael Meacher, presented a Bill to


authorise the Secretary of State to acquire shares in British Leyland Motor Corporation Limited and in a company formed for the purpose of acquiring shares in British Leyland Motor Corporation Limited: and the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 160.]

ADJOURNMENT (SPRING)

3.38 p.m.

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Edward Short): Perhaps it would be for the convenience of the House if I moved the motion formally now and reserved any remarks till the end of the debate. Therefore, I beg to move,
That this House at its rising on Friday 23rd May do adjourn till Monday 9th June.

3.39 p.m.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Usually, within the course of this kind of debate, when hon. Members argue against the proposal that has been made by the Leader of the House, the argument that we should not go away on recess until this or that matter has been adequately ventilated is little more than a formality; but in the case which I wish to put before the right hon. Gentleman and the House, which I believe will be echoed, supported and strengthened by many of my right hon. and hon. colleagues representing constituencies in Northern Ireland, there is a literal and direct reason for asserting that there is unfinished business which the House ought not to leave behind when it rises for the Whitsun Recess.
It was in the week in February when the present cease-fire, as it is called, started in Northern Ireland, that my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux), as leader of the United Ulster Unionist Coalition and in its name—though I have no doubt that what he said would have commanded the support of many others and of all the representatives of Northern Ireland seats—asked that there should be an early sitting of the newly constituted Northern Ireland Committee in order to examine in detail the statement which had just been made by the Secretary of State on the cease-fire and the consequential arrangements.
You will recall, Mr. Speaker, that considerable importance was attached by the Government to the establishment of this Committee, which, though not technically a Grand Committee, it was believed would be useful as a forum where there could be detailed examination and, if necessary, cross-examination of


important matters affecting Northern Ireland.
No matter could be more important for Northern Ireland than the cease-fire and its consequences, and no matter, as I shall seek to argue, called more for the kind of debate and the kind of elucidation which only consideration in a Committee of this House makes possible.
I am not complaining that there was any reluctance on the part of the Leader of the House to comply with our request. Indeed, had he done so, it would have been in accordance with his undertaking that the subjects to be dealt with by that Committee should be such as were desired by hon. Members representing Northern Ireland seats. However, I have to say with regret that persistently and, I shall argue, ill-advisedly the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has from week to week and from month to month opposed the sitting of the Committee to consider this matter.
We did not contest this motion when it was moved before the Easter Recess. In retrospect we are inclined to blame ourselves for not having done so. Certainly with every week that passed we were vulnerable to the natural complaint of our constituents—who were not to know of the constant and persistent representations that we were making—that we were failing to use our position in Parliament and the opportunities deliberately provided by this House in order to debate matters which were of the utmost moment to them.
I shall return to the reasons for our reticence; nevertheless, we allowed February and March to pass, until, in the middle of last month, very regretfully, my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, South and his colleagues felt that, for our own protection and, indeed, in fairness to the people of Northern Ireland, we had no alternative but to let it be known publicly, after a final plea to the Lord President and to the Secretary of State, that it was not our fault that our repeated requests for the Committee to sit upon this subject had been refused.
It is in pursuance of that decision that this afternoon we are using our opportunity to demand—I think that is not an unreasonable word—that the House shall not rise until due and detailed consideration

has been given to the subject requested and to argue that it is in the interests of all concerned, and not least Her Majesty's Government and the policies which they are following in Northern Ireland, that such a debate shall take place.
In order to illustrate the nature and the urgency of our request I want to refer to a very recent incident—an incident which is horribly fresh in the minds of hon. Members with connections in Northern Ireland and to which reference was made in the debate in the House yesterday. Before I do so, however, may I make a point, through the Lord President, to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland who had notice that this matter would be raised this afternoon. He will, I am sure, agree that one of the besetting difficulties in Northern Ireland today is the prevalence on all sides of mutual suspicion, fed by an almost incredible crop and aftermath of rumour. Rumour and suspicion are the atmosphere in which politics are lived today in Northern Ireland. It is the atmosphere in which Her Majesty's Government have to endeavour to bring their policies to fruition. Anything, therefore, which will assist the Secretary of State to break through that cloud of suspicion and rumour and to establish beyond all doubt or cavil the bona fides of Her Majesty's Government and the transparent sincerity and plainness of what they are attempting is in the highest interest of the Government as well as of Northern Ireland and, therefore, of the country as a whole.
I am sure that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland would be the first to say that we, on this bench, have gone to the utmost limit, time after time, in order to maintain his credibility in the face of those in Northern Ireland who, sometimes with very plausible arguments, have queried his good faith and good intentions. Both in this House—I could give many instances—and in public in Northern Ireland we have asserted and reasserted our conviction in the sincerity of his policies and the credibility of his statements. We have done so, not only because we believe that—for otherwise it would have been contrary to our duty to do so—but because in Northern Ireland the credibility of Government is absolutely vital to the restoration of peace and to a tolerable future for that Province.
Therefore, if the Secretary of State would go with me—and he must—so far as to accept my diagnosis and description of this background and then to admit—I am sure he would—that the motive of my right hon. and hon. Friends and myself has been to assist and support him in making head against rumour and suspicion, may I put a proposition to him and to the Government? There is nothing and no means whereby any Government can so effectively make plain to the public what its policies are, its bona fides and its sincerity in pursuing them as debate in this House and in its Committees.
I understand—indeed, anyone who has held office will understand—the temptation of Ministers faced with a difficult and delicate situation to duck debate. That tendency is ever-present; it is implicit in human nature that one is reluctant to face debate. But it is a temptation which has to be resisted, for only when this House sees, and only when the public, through this House, sees, that the Government are not afraid to face the House, are not afraid of any question which can be put to them, are not afraid of the confrontation of words and actions which are apparently inconsistent, can confidence and conviction be restored.
It is because I believe that that is a well-founded principle of our experience, that that is one of the great functions of this place, that I am arguing this afternoon that we ought not to assent to the motion and ought not to disperse for a second recess since the cause of debate arose until this House has performed its function in this context.
I have before me the two news items, of yesterday and today—from The Times as it happens—relating to the murder of a policeman in Londonderry on Saturday, as an illustration, the most recent, of the disease which I have just attempted to diagnose. I want to quote one paragraph of the report from Belfast which we read there on the 12th—yesterday. It runs as follows:
The first deliberate killing of a member of the security forces during the present ceasefire brought swift contact between government negotiators and Provisionals over the weekend.
I am not, of course, attaching any official authority to the words which that correspondent, writing that dispatch from Belfast, used. However, I ask the

House—I know that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is acutely sensitive to this—what is the impact upon the people of Northern Ireland, all of them, when they read a report from Belfast that as a matter of course, following such a murder, the result was "swift contact between Government negotiators and Provisionals over the weekend"? They are told there that Her Majesty's Government are in negotiation—not merely in contact, not merely in communication, but in negotiation—with those presumed to be guilty of this murder. Quite suddenly they see the whole forest of their suspicions and agonising doubts over the last three or four months confirmed. Nor would that be altered when they read—I shall not refer to it in detail—the follow-up report in The Times of today.
That proposition, deeply damaging to the Government if it is false—as I believe it must be—and grave whether it is false or true, since it is important to all who are concerned for peace in Northern Ireland, is but the latest example of a whole sequence of such apparent contradictions between Government policy and Government action, largely unexplained, which have run through from January to this very day.
I repeat that it is in the highest interest of Her Majesty's Government, of this country, and particularly of Northern Ireland for us to recognise that the only means which can be used to resolve these contradictions and to banish those doubts should now, without further delay, be taken—that is, by accepting the offer deliberately made, and the opportunity deliberately created, by the establishment of the Northern Ireland Committee to clear up this whole topic by question and answer in a way which cannot be achieved at Question Time or on the Adjournment or in any other effective manner.
I have in my hand—but I shall not deal with them in any detail—the whole series of the statements which were made by the Secretary of State, from before the so-called ceasefire on 14th January to his statement on 11th February, when the cease-fire, as it is called, came into effect. Those statements were from the beginning puzzling. In the statement of 14th January it became clear that for some


reason a cease-fire would bring with it some form of formalised contacts between Her Majesty's Government and those whose abstention from crimes is misdescribed—for it is a very misleading term—as a cease-fire.
Perhaps I should quote only a phrase from the Secretary of State's statement—a statement made in Northern Ireland—on 22nd January, which included the expression,
arrangements that might be made to ensure that any cease-fire did not break down".
That phrase—and those words were again repeated on the eve of the event of 5th February—enables me to illustrate very briefly what it is that must be debated and must be explained.
The Government would not for a moment accept that there is a cease-fire in Northern Ireland in the sense that two combatant bodies of similar status have come to an agreement, one with another, upon terms to cease fire. That is the natural and, so far as I know, the only proper connotation of the term "cease-fire". Consequently, the mere use of that phrase in the context of Northern Ireland is already itself a propaganda success for the Provisional IRA. Let us however accept, despite that—as Her Majesty's Government do—that the element on the one side is the cessation of violence and that on the other side is the very proper modification of the behaviour of authority and of Government in the light of the diminution or cessation of violence. Let us take the position exactly as the Government assert it—that cease-fire means that, on the one hand, violence does not continue and criminal acts cease to be perpetrated, while, on the other hand, the Government adapt their behaviour, very naturally, rationally and properly, to an alteration in the security situation.
We then face the implication of the terminology of which I have reminded the House:
the arrangements … to ensure that any cease-fire does not break down".
What can be the meaning in the mouth of the Government of "arrangements to ensure" that violence is not resumed? The arrangements to ensure that violence is not resumed remain entirely in the hands of those who perpetrate violence.

Surely if any meaning lies behind such an expression, it can only be—at least so people argue in Northern Ireland, and I know not how to refute their argument—that there are known conditions, though kept secret from the public and this House, upon which the cessation of violence is dependent.

Mr. John Biggs-Davison: Would the right hon. Gentleman not agree that it is a little misleading to speak of the cessation of violence and that there has been no cessation of violence in parts of the Province—for example, in County Armagh, where violence involving the Regular Army, the UDR and the Provisional IRA has continued?

Mr. Powell: My hon. Friend was right to interrupt me and to correct my expression. There has been no more than a diminution of most types of violence over the period which has been described by this extraordinary term "cease-fire". I am very much obliged to my hon. Friend. He is absolutely right and it is good that the House should be reminded of it.
I resume my point, which is that the continual references by the Government to arrangements to ensure that the ceasefire does not break down are such as to constitute, until there can be proper debate which elucidates what lies behind them, not merely an invitation but almost a compulsion to believe that, whatever the Government say, there is in fact a bargain with specific terms and that each side is policing the terms which the other side has accepted.
I am afraid that when, following the so-called cease-fire in the second week of February, the Government announced what those arrangements were—and I will not go into details of the extraordinary "incident centres" which were to be set up—the difficulty of acquitting the Government of having entered into terms with the men of violence in Northern Ireland became almost insuperable. In his statement of 11th February the Secretary of State, referring to the incident centres, said:
There will be full consultation … with the security forces on these arrangements which will cover only incidents arising directly out of the cease-fire."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th February, 1975; Vol. 885, c. 207–8.]


Again, those are words which are very difficult to interpret, to which it is almost impossible to attach any meaning, unless the cease-fire, in the view of Her Majesty's Government, represented a series of concessions made in form by the enemies of the State in Northern Ireland to which there corresponded concessions or terms made in form by Her Majesty's Government—not just the natural assumption, which everyone would make, that if things get better the behaviour of Government would be modified, but specific terms.
So I come straight back to last weekend, and I will quote from the same report following the murder of a policeman in Londonderry the words which were put out on Saturday night, and of course faithfully reproduced by the Press, by the Provisional IRA in Londonderry:
The killing"—
that is, the murder of the policeman—
was 'a direct result of breaches in the truce over the past two weeks when two houses were raided by the Army and one by a squad of plain clothes RUC men'.
I do not treat the communiqués of the Provisional IRA as having a higher degree of credibility than those issued during the late hostilities by Dr. Goebbels. These statements are of course acts of war. They are meant to deceive. They are meant to cause confusion. They are indeed aimed at the Government, for they are aimed at shaking the credibility of the Government and the confidence of the public in the truth of what the Secretary of State says and in the honesty of the Government's intentions. So it is not my purpose to say that I believe what these criminals, for their own criminal purpose, put out and what was printed by the Press. The point is a different one. It is that there is only one way in which Her Majesty's Government, with the assistance of this House, can reassert their own credibility and destroy that of the Provisional IRA, only one way in which they can create the proper background for the attempt at a more lasting constitutional settlement in Northern Ireland. And that, I repeat, is debate.
This House exists for debate. This House performs its function by debate. This House does its work by showing, either proving or disproving, that Her Majesty's Government have to all questions that can legitimately be put to them,

to all arguments that can be advanced against them, a tenable, rational reply which ought to convince the citizen.
In opposing this motion this afternoon, therefore, my hon. Friends and I, unlike many of those who—very properly, I make no criticism of them—take part in this terminal debate, are in no way speaking against the interests of the Government. On the contrary, the representatives of the Northern Ireland seats are the best friends in the Northern Ireland situation that Her Majesty's Government have. We are pleading in their interest much more than in ours, because, as for us, our constituents will say, "They have done their best, they have discharged their duty as best they could, but evidently it was Her Majesty's Government which would not answer and presumably had not got an answer."
What we are saying is in the interests of the Government—that they should use the device which never fails to re-establish the credibility, to re-establish the bona fides, to re-establish the logic of the acts of Government. There is no way in which they can do it so well as by voluntarily opening up this debate in the Northern Ireland Committee, promised and introduced with such a fanfare, and by doing so at once—doing so before we go away to a recess which we hope will not be punctuated by deeds such as that from which I have drawn the immediate illustration.
It is a plea for the Government to do something in their own interest which we make this afternoon in opposing this motion.

4.9 p.m.

Mr. Jack Ashley: I want to make a brief contribution to a very important subject before the House adjourns. I believe that the law relating to rape should and must be changed, and changed very urgently indeed, because the fact is that we now have cities living in fear.
There is a very curious dichotomy between public opinion outside the House and opinion inside the House. I have put down an Early-Day Motion suggesting that the law should be changed which has been signed by only 30-odd Members, yet I can assure the House that without a shadow of a doubt there are millions of people who are now appalled at the


state of the law regarding rape. I have received telegrams and petitions and letters by the hundred. In all my days in the House I have never known feelings to be as deep and as strong and I have never known people to be so profoundly disturbed. The reason is that people are now convinced that the law, as defined by the Law Lords, is such as to encourage rape and to discourage women from reporting it. I am utterly convinced beyond all doubt that the law must be changed, for three reasons.
First, the effect of the law as now confirmed by the Law Lords will be significantly to affect juries. Juries now do not simply have to decide that a woman was compelled to have sexual relations against her will. Juries must now decide whether the man who assaulted her genuinely believed that he was not assaulting her, no matter how irresponsible the grounds for that belief are. Those are the key and crucial words, "no matter how irresponsible the grounds for that belief are." We could have an absurd situation in which a rapist could appear before a court and the jury could believe the woman's evidence that she was raped but that same jury, if it believed that the man genuinely thought he was not raping the woman, however irrational the grounds for that belief, would be unable to convict.
What a crazy situation. What an absurd situation. What an impossible situation for juries. The effect on juries will be significant. What about the effect on potential rapists? Far too often men generally, with their deeply ingrained prejudices, tend to laugh at the subject because many men are very stupid about sexual discrimination. Many men are very stupid about rape. Many men are very stupid about the relationship of thugs to women. They tend to categorise rape as the kind of situation involving people who have played about with sexual relations and the man perhaps has gone a little too far. But rape is not like that.
Rape is a vicious, evil and degrading assault by a strong man on a woman. It is a victory for strength over weakness. It is villainy run riot. Any law which encourages this kind of thuggery should be changed. What will happen to women when they are assaulted? They will be far more reluctant to come forward

because it is not solely a matter of the women being faced by a defence lawyer. Instead they will be faced with their assailants who can accuse the women of wanting to be involved. That is entirely wrong. Women will be even more reluctant to complain to the police.
If women who are raped are not prepared to complain we shall never catch the rapists. If we cannot catch the rapists they will go on raping. The figures for rape have increased by 34 per cent. in four years. Over half the men who committed rape had no proceedings taken against them. Unless we change the law the rape figures will rocket, while the number of women reporting rape will drift downwards. We are faced with a situation in which law and order has gone mad.
So, the effect of the law, if it is not changed, will be first on juries, second on rapists and third on women. I urge the House to bring pressure to bear on the Home Secretary and on the Government to change the law. If it is not changed the effects will be catastrophic.
I return to the point about the dichotomy between public opinion outside and opinion in the House. I have the greatest respect for hon. Members but they do not fully appreciate how inflamed public opinion is on this subject. They do not realise the extent of the fears in the minds of women and in the minds of many men who are affected by the whole situation. For me, to receive telegrams, petitions and letters from student unions, trade unions, women's organisations, even Conservative associations and hundreds of individuals is a clear indication of the extent to which public opinion is alarmed.
The Government will flout public opinion unless they are prepared to take action. They ought not to refer the matter in a leisurely way to the Criminal Law Revision Committee, fine though that may be. That is a longer-term approach which would be acceptable to the House, but it will not solve the immediate problem. I beg the Leader of the House to make representations to the Home Secretary about a change in the law to ensure that any man who is accused of raping a woman is not allowed to advance a defence on irresponsible grounds. The law must be changed so that it is incumbent upon any man so


accused to base his defence on responsible grounds. That is what the law should be, and that is what I hope this House will recommend to the Government.

4.26 p.m.

Mr. Emlyn Hooson: I do not think it would be right for the House to accede to the motion proposed by the Lord President without there being adequate discussion of the disastrous and declining economic state of the country.
Never in my adult life have I seen a situation in which the country has declined as rapidly as it has recently. This is a matter affecting all parties and all Members. The motion before us is that we should adjourn for a fortnight. I ask the House to consider what has occurred in the past fortnight. In the past 14 days, the pound has deteriorated to its lowest ever level. We have major strikes in many of our large industries. We have inflation at a rate which no civilised country has been able to stand for long. I do not think that any parliamentary democracy has been able to exist for an extended period with a rate of inflation such as that which we are now suffering. Yet it is proposed that we should adjourn without any adequate steps being taken to deal with the situation.

Mr. Edward Short: Perhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman was not present at Question Time when the Prime Minister said that it was hoped next week to find time for a whole day's debate on the economy.

Mr. Hooson: I was present. I do not think that that is sufficient. There has been a steady deterioration in the state of the country. We have fooled ourselves that what happens to other countries cannot happen to us. We have read of the Weimar Republic and the way in which members of the Assembly there discussed irrelevancies when their economy was going to pot, creating the ideal conditions for a dictatorship. Are we to be in the same position?
We have recently been discussing the Industry Bill. Important or otherwise as that may be, the provision of £450 million in that Bill bears no relevance to the present situation because if inflation continues the whole of our economy will be undermined. If we have enormous

unemployment, which could be another consequence, that measure would be irrelevant. The truth is that to our electorate outside, much of what the House of Commons is discussing appears to be totally irrelevant to the situation facing us.
I was at a weekend conference last weekend at Ditchley Park at which there were some very distinguished representatives from many parts of the world, all very friendly to our country and representing a very wide spectrum of views. Universally they took an extremely gloomy view of our prospects. I agree with the Prime Minister when he says that it is up to this country to put its own house in order. Whether we are in or out of the Common Market, it is what we do at home that matters. But the truth is that we are not doing anything.

Mr. Edward Short: Rubbish.

Mr. Hooson: That is not true. The situation is deteriorating at a very great rate. The Lord President, from a sedentary position, seems to pay no attention to the fact that the pound is deteriorating at a rate at which it has never deteriorated before.

Mr. Short: The hon. and learned Member is not helping it.

Mr. Hooson: May I tell the Lord President that if he is so remote from economic reality that he thinks that a speech from a back bencher in the House of Commons causes the pound to deteriorate so quickly, he is talking absolute nonsense.
The truth is that there are certain highly unpleasant things which the House as a whole has now to face. The time for playing party politics on this issue is over. We have reached a stage where it is too late to have a statutory prices and incomes policy. The Government are faced with the almost inevitable decision whether to have a total freeze in the next few weeks.

Mr. Dennis Canavan: Rubbish.

Mr. Hooson: The hon. Member for West Stirlingshire (Mr. Canavan) can shout "Rubbish" but this country is dependent on foreign loans to the extent of 5 per cent. of its expenditure. We


have to consider the consequences if those loans are withdrawn, as they might easily be should the pound continue to deteriorate. What then? The hon. Member shouted "Rubbish", but the truth is that in this country at the present time we still have not faced reality. This applies to all parties. I do not exempt one party as against another in this situation. It is up to hon. Members, back benchers though we may be, to show that some of us are aware of the rapid deterioration.
The Secretary of State for the Environment spoke in the country on either Friday or Saturday on the question of local government expenditure. He said that there had to be a total standstill during the coming year. He was attacked yesterday by the General Secretary of NALGO, the trade union principally concerned. When it is appreciated that over 50 per cent. of local government expenditure is on salaries and wages, what does a standstill mean? If it means what it is stated to be—a standstill in expenditure—it means the cutting back rapidly of services. If salaries and wages are insured against the effect of inflation—and this is what the built-in provisions for automatic increases amount to—it means that the 50 per cent. will go up rapidly as a proportion of total expenditure, and the only way to maintain a standstill is to cut down on services. This situation merely illustrates the Government's failure to come to grips with the fact that it is the explosion in wages and salaries above anything else that is the present cause of inflation.
In the last few years we have seen the creation of a huge bureaucratic superstructure in our country, and the last Conservative administration was as responsible as any for this. Civil Service rates of pay are vastly in excess of what they were four years ago. Local government rates of pay have increased enormously, as have the administrative rates of pay in the National Health Service. These rates of pay are not for people in creative or productive industry and they throw a tremendous strain on this country. This is partly why we are living beyond our means.
The Government should put their cards on the table before this House and face the reality of the situation. Is there any way at the present time of restoring confidence

abroad other than the imposition of Draconian measures such as I suggest—a total freeze on wages and salaries while the whole situation facing the country is considered?
As Members of Parliament we should consider whether it is our duty to try to bury our differences as best we can and to agree upon a programme that will enable this country to survive. The alternative seems to me to be to lurch, as the Weimar Republic did, from one high degree of inflation into an even higher degree of inflation, until in the end nobody is prepared to take the steps necessary to put matters right.

Mr. Frank Hooky: The hon. and learned Gentleman seems to ignore the fact that it was not inflation but savage deflation that destroyed the Weimar Republic. Inflation occurred at the outset and had been long overcome. It was the fact of having three million unemployed, not inflation, that destroyed the Weimar Republic.

Mr. Hooson: With the greatest respect, the hon. Gentleman knows that the Weirman Republic took no adequate steps to deal with inflation and it was when it had allowed matters to drift for a long time that the savage deflation occurred, causing the country to become ripe for take-over by either an extreme Right-wing or an extreme Left-wing organisation.
I submit that it would be wrong for the House to agree to the motion to adjourn until we have had some guidance from the Government about the steps they are prepared to take. If the deterioration of the last fortnight is matched by the deterioration from now until 9th June, we shall by then be in desperate straits indeed.
I would join with right hon. and hon. Members in other parts of the House though perhaps on different grounds in resisting the motion.

4.27 p.m.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: I do not think we should accede to the motion before the House until the Government have told us a little more about their intentions concerning some of the unfinished business. Before this House returns from the recess on 9th June, a great deal of business will have taken


place. That business is not unrelated to some 30 regulations which the Scrutiny Committee has recommended that this House should debate. Not only should that business be discussed, but there are also some unfinished matters relating to the 21 debates that this House has so far had on EEC orders, and matters related to them, since the middle of last summer. It may be surprising to some people that this House has had 21 debates. Very few of those debates have been reported in any sense at all in the Press, and hardly any on the radio or television, perhaps because they have been almost entirely late at night and cut by the Government to a maximum of one and a half hours.
The other matter to which I should like to refer is that hon. Members usually get representations from members of the public concerning White Papers, even draft Statutory Instruments, Bills, and so on. All these are readily obtainable, and pressure groups and members of the public are able to buy them, read them, and see how their interests are affected. But that is not the position concerning the regulations which we have debated and those which we have not debated. They are not available to the general public at Her Majesty's Stationery Office and, alas, they are sometimes available only just in time to hon. Members.
I pointed out, in the debate on 3rd December last, that I was not able to get a very important Government Explanatory Memorandum on the basic energy document of the EEC—R/1472/73—until 24 hours before the debate took place. Later in my remarks—and I have given notice of this to the Lord President and to the Minister of State for the Treasury—I wish to draw the attention of the House to a previous explanatory memorandum which I believe was wholly misleading and which may have misled even the Minister of State who opened the debate in question.
There are many other matters which have gone through this House and which are still technically on the Order Paper. On 3rd February 1975, this House discussed a motion to annul the Import Duties (General) Order 1975 which put up the rate of levy and tax on a great many imported foods. Unfortunately, fewer than 40 Members voted on that

occasion. It was put on the Order Paper again and it appeared for several days afterwards. It has become what is technically known as a dropped order.
It may be of interest to the Minister of Agriculture, who is currently making a great many speeches on food prices, to see the Answers to Questions on 1st May 1975 when his Under-Secretary admitted that levies on New Zealand cheese imports were no less than 28p per lb. If this House reactivated that order and debated it, I have no doubt that the Government would have to explain why, in answer to Questions—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. George Thomas): Order. I am being as liberal as I can, but the hon. Gentleman must address himself to whether the House should or should not accept the motion before it.

Mr. Spearing: I am addressing my remarks to the fact that the dropped order to which I have referred should be debated before we go into recess on the date proposed in the motion. If the Lord President feels that we should debate it before the motion comes into effect, I hope that he will put it on the Order Paper for next week.
My next request is that my right hon. Friend should do the same in respect of the EEC budget. We have had two EEC budgets since joining the EEC. Neither of them has been debated in this House. The Lord President put down matters relating to the budget for debate on 19th December of last year. Since that date, he has promised the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) that we shall have a debate on the budget. However, it looks as though we shall not have that debate before we go into recess. I ask my right hon. Friend to consider a debate on the budget next week before the motion comes into effect.
I remind the House that the budget consisted of 10 lbs. of documents. It was put before us last December, and we have not yet debated it. My right hon. Friend knows that in this package there are many figures which would be of great interest to the British people in the coming weeks. For some of the figures which would interest them most, they might search in vain. In order to discover some of the facts about the budget,


it was necessary for me to ask Questions on 27th February about the guarantee fund. I shall not weary the House by going through them in detail. But, despite the 10 lbs. of documents which we have still to debate, the breakdown of the European Agricultural Insurance and Guarantee Fund does not appear in those documents, and I had to ask a Question on 13th March the Answer to which revealed that the EEC will give support to tobacco growing in the Community of some £70 million, which is about the sum that it spends on providing surplus grain to overseas countries in need.
The other matter which we should debate and which has been technically before this House is Command Paper 6033, the Report of the Intervention Board for Agricultural Produce. This is of great significance to the House because it shows what money has been spent on behalf of the British public in this country in the last year, 1974, in respect of agricultural intervention. We read in Table K that £14 million has been spent on production subsidies on cereals used for starch, and so on. I should have thought that the fact that £14 million of public money had been spent in this country on the production of starch from cereals merited debate in this House and that, if the Lord President could arrange a debate next week before the recess, it would be greatly appreciated by this House and by the British public.
In answer to a Written Question on 6th May, the Minister of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food told me that the £14 million related to 746,000 tons of maize and 49,000 tons of wheat and wheat flour which were used for the production of starch and 41,000 tons of maize used for the production of maize grits for brewing beer. I do not suggest that the people who received those subsidies made money out of them. I am sure that the £14 million represented the difference between the cost of other raw materials and the cost of this foodstuff which was for human or animal consumption. However, the Minister of State added:
It is not normal practice to publish detailed information relating to bodies or persons to whom payment of subsidies is made." — [Official Report, 6th May 1975; Vol. 891, c. 423.]
So we have the situation where £14 million of public money has been spent

in providing subsidies to persons or bodies whose business is producing starch, brewers' maize, and a substance known as quellmehl, and we do not know who they are.
I have described this as public money. I should like my right hon. Friend to tell the House whether it is public money from this House or from the EEC. The intervention report bears the Royal Arms on the front of it, and the usual inscription, "Honi soit qui mal y pense"—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman is now arguing his Common Market case—

Mr. Powell: And very well.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: That may be so. It is not for me to say. However, the motion is to deal with the Adjournment.

Mr. Stan Thorne: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am trying to be clear about your ruling. The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) argued a good case to say why this House should not go into recess until it had considered an important matter. It seems to me that my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) is doing precisely that. In order to do it, he has to refer to documents and information available to him.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am much obliged for the hon. Gentleman's help, but I must advise him that it is not the effect which the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) has upon him which is important at the moment. It is the effect which the hon. Gentleman has on me. I want to be fair to everyone, but I must ask the hon. Member for Newham, South to keep to the motion.

Mr. Spearing: I shall endeavour to do so. However, any decision about whether we go into recess on Friday of next week must surely depend on the business before us.
It is not within my knowledge that a speaker in a debate on which a Question is put need necessarily come down on the side of the "Ayes" or that of the "Noes". Hon. Members need to have the relevant considerations before them in order to decide whether to vote "Aye" or "No". It may be that some of my


arguments will reinforce the reasons for a number of right hon. and hon. Members voting "No" on this occasion. Therefore, I submit, in requesting the Lord President to arrange time for us to debate these matters of importance, that my right hon. Friend's reply will greatly affect our decision about whether we should go into recess on Friday week.
The final matter to which I refer is one of which I have given notice to my right hon. Friend and which I contemplated raising under Standing Order No. 9. It relates to a debate that we had on 12th March about the European Monetary Co-operation Fund. In the course of that debate, I did something which a number of hon. Members recognised as being relatively rare. I accused the Government of not being frank with the House and of not providing correct information. Since that date, the Committee on EEC Secondary Legislation has published a report which made it clear in Questions Nos. 213 and 214 in the Minutes of Evidence that it had taken on 25th February that the Minister of State at the Treasury had made statements which turned out not to be correct.
In my view, this matter should be cleared up before the House goes into recess. The point of issue is whether this country is bound by a certain ruling of the EEC concerned with economic and monetary union and a fund establishing a European monetary union.
I refer to Regulation 907 of the Council which states that the European Monetary Co-operation Fund is intended to achieve economic and monetary union and the progressive harmonisation of member States' economies. However, before that Select Committee the Minister of State in answer to a question about economic and monetary union, from the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) said:
I do not think anybody at this stage is thinking of this"—
the fund—
as a means to that particular end.
When my right hon. Friend winds up the debate, will he either tell us that we can debate this subject again before we go into recess or, if he has obtained the information of which I have given notice, make it quite clear whether this country is bound to the objectives of the European

Monetary Co-operation Fund set out in the Official Journal of the European Communities of 5th April 1973 which concludes that,
This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.

4.41 p.m.

Mr. Nicholas Ridley: I, too, believe that we should not adjourn, at least until we have had an economic package from the Government. I strongly support the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson), who spoke of this earlier.
I must first dispense with the sedentary remarks of the Lord President, that in some ways the hon. and learned Gentleman's speech was damaging, that it threatened to bring sterling lower and that he should not have dared to raise this matter on the Floor of the House. The obvious answer to that is that the Lord President intervened in the hon. and learned Gentleman's speech to promise a debate next week when all hon. Gentlemen would be able to say what they think, which clearly would be, under his own definition, damaging to sterling. But I pass that by. That is a point on which I do not wish to dwell.
I wish to make the fundamental point that the value of the pound is not determined by what people say in or outside the House or in the newspapers. It is determined by how many people wish to buy pounds and how many people wish to sell them. The supply and demand of currency is what will determine whether is goes up and down in future weeks. In truth, there is no difference between the value of the pound and the value of bricks, beer or beef. If there is an oversupply of these commodities, the price goes down. If there is a shortage, the price goes up. Therefore, the only factors which can influence the value of the pound are whether there is an over supply of pounds and whether there is a shortage of those who wish to buy them or, on the contrary, a surplus.
It must, therefore, be obvious that the reason for the fall in the value of the pound, which has been 4 per cent. for the last week or so, is not the result of anything that anybody has said. It has not been caused by the actions of speculators or noble Lords in another place making speeches. The Prime Minister in


his celebrated broadcast on Sunday used an extraordinary expression. He said that it was the fault of unknown persons' neurosis—neurosis in the City, neurosis in another place and neurosis in the Press and media. It is not the fault of neurosis. It is the fault of nobody but the Government.
For the Government to seek to ride out their responsibilities is to evade the trust which was placed in them by those who put them in office. They cannot seek to claim that we should not raise this matter and that we should not discuss it. It is right that we should not adjourn. We should not go into recess until the Government have announced what they will do, if anything, about their prime responsibility for the great economic damage that their policy, and their policy alone, might create for this country.
The value of the pound is determined by supply and demand of pounds. The basic cause of our problem is the supply of pounds due to the enormous borrowing requirement in the Budget. I make no party point. Other hon. Gentlemen will be able to endorse that I made the same criticism, to a lesser degree, of Budgets under the Conservative administration.
It is this growing propensity to spend what we have not got which is causing the deepening economic crisis in this country. On top of this we fear—and this is another reason why I do not want the House to rise—that the costs of the Government's industrial policies have not been included in the Estimates. The cost of the National Enterprise Board is £50 million in the Estimates. It is now to carry British Leyland, which might involve hundreds of millions of pounds in the coming financial year. There is nothing in the Estimates for the nationalisation of shipbuilding or aircraft. There is nothing in the Estimates for the Community Land Bill. There is nothing in the Estimates for the nationalisation of the oil royalties in the North Sea.
Nobody has confidence in the Chancellor's housekeeping. It has not been overlooked abroad that the Chancellor's forecast deficit of £2,700 million turned out, in the event, to be £7,600 million. With the additions that I have just mentioned,

what will be the outturn for the Budget deficit for 1975?
The considerations which give rise to the worry about the stability of our currency are the activities of the Secretary of State for Industry, including his wild attacks on the private enterprise system which keeps the economy afloat in this country; the profligate, rotten housekeeping of the Chancellor, who has allowed expenditure to get out of control; and the actions of the other spending Ministers who have allowed their budgets to get right away from them.
I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Environment, who at least has said that local authority expenditure must be curtailed, but he is the one who allowed housing subsidies to reach the staggering total of £3,900 million in the current year. However, the sinner who has repented is better than one who has not.
This is a problem which the Government must attend to. Yet here we are a few days before we rise talking about Clay Cross—I thought we had been talking about hare-coursing but perhaps that has been dropped—and about a whole series of trivia and things which are irrelevant to this major, fundamental and basic problem which faces the country, namely, the declining value of our currency.
There is only one thing that the Government, or indeed anybody, can do to put the matter right. There is only one thing that will have any impact on the situation, and that is for the Government—preferably the Prime Minister—to come to the Box and make a statement about the cuts that he proposes to make in public spending and, if necessary, the increased taxation which he proposes to impose.
There is one matter on which I do not agree with the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery. He said that perhaps there should be a coalition of all those who hold the British economy dear, so that they could again impose a statutory prices and incomes policy. I am afraid that he is putting his head in the sand. If he believes that we can have a borrowing requirement of £9,000 million rising to we know not what, and bottle it up with a law, after the experience of the prices and incomes policy of my right


hon. Friends in 1973 and 1974 and of the Labour Government in the 1960s, he is doing damage to the very idea of a coalition by making it clear that if he is part of any coalition he will make sure that it cannot succeed. The measures that he advocated could never succeed in those circumstances.

Mr. Hooson: I have listened to the hon. Gentleman's speech with interest. When he talks of curtailing public expenditure, he must realise that the biggest components of public expenditure are wages and salaries. The hon. Gentleman has not even indicated how he would deal with those components. That is what needs to be dealt with. I suggested that we were faced with a situation in which we would have to have a total freeze to see what could be done. This is the nub of the question. While people are insured against inflation by various means—even under the social contract—how does the hon. Gentleman propose to deal with these components of public expenditure?

Mr. Ridley: The hon. and learned Gentleman would make a rotten doctor. He would be scratching off the spots and failing to observe that the disease was getting worse and worse. Any coalition which concentrates on scratching off the spots will do us a disservice. Any party which advocates that policy is doing us a disservice. There are no easy options. There is no easy, painless way out.
The answer requires massive cuts in public expenditure and higher taxation. It will cause unemployment, distress and a reduction in the standard of living—certainly, a reduction in the rate of growth of real incomes. That is the option which faces the House.
We should not pack up our bags and go on holiday until the Government have faced up to their responsibilities and done something to save the nation from the gloom which threatens it for the future.

4.51 p.m.

Mr. John Golding: I oppose the motion, but I assure my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that I do not have sufficient energy to go to the Division Lobby to vote against it.
I listened with foreboding to the speeches of the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) and the

hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley). We must make it clear from the Labour benches that there can be no coalition, no grouping in the House—not only now but for the foreseeable future—between Labour Members, elected on our manifesto, and Opposition Members.
I listened to those speeches with foreboding because I was disturbed to think that the Government could be pressurised and panicked into taking the type of Draconian measures which could make certain that we would not solve our economic difficulties. Draconian measures would perhaps work if people were not people. We must rely on the good sense of the British people and learn from the past that there can be no solution without their consent.
I was disturbed to hear the proposal for a statutory wage freeze. If there begins to be talk of such a freeze, present claims and settlements will be inflated in anticipation of it.

Mr. John Page: They could not be inflated any more.

Mr. Golding: The hon. Gentleman is wrong. A great degree of moderation is being exercised because of the loyalty of trade union officials towards the Labour Government.
After a freeze, all the practical difficulties would arise again, with all the sense of injustice. As soon as the freeze was applied, one group after another, very often in the public service and the lowest paid, would come to hon. Members on both sides of the House to complain that they had just been caught and to argue their case. Hon. Members would pressurise the Government to make exceptions for such groups. In the middle of the freeze period, or towards the end, the whole policy would have to be reassessed because the Government would face the twin force of a group which both felt a sense of injustice and was industrially strong. Given those two things occurring together, there would be an industrial confrontation, and almost certainly the Government would be defeated. Then the policy would be in ruins.
The only hope is to get the support of working people and their organisations for a modicum of wage restraint. There can be no reliance on statutory pay policies


to achieve it, and there can be no immediate resort to Draconian measures, because such measures would be taken as a signal by the unions and working people immediately to increase their wage demands. Unless the people accept economic measures as being essential for the survival of Britain, the measures cannot work.
Because of technology and the closely-knit type of industrial society in which we live, some small groups of workers have a great deal of power, which must be taken as a reality. Against that background, talk of wage freezes and Draconian measures is theoretical.
I came into the Chamber to hear the advertised statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade on industrial democracy. Why was that statement not made? I hope that we shall have an encouraging statement before the Adjournment, a statement that the Government will act as quickly as possible to bring about industrial democracy. When the Government do not have much money to spend, this is an appropriate time for us to deal with legislation which will not involve expenditure and yet could bring about an irreversible shift in the balance of power in favour of working people. Many of us on the Labour benches very much hope that my right hon. Friend will make a statement shortly and that it will contain no talk of inquiries of deferment, but only of action.
That leads me to my final question. Are we to have a settlement of the dispute between the Chairman of the British Steel Corporation and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry before we adjourn a week on Friday? Again, this is a very important matter. When we were in Opposition we promised the steel workers that there would be a review of the proposals contained in the then administration's White Paper. That promise was also made at the election, and Lord Beswick carried it out on behalf of the Secretary of State for Industry. The review was certainly favourable to the workers at Shelton in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Cant). Now the Government are said to have no legal right to issue a directive to the Chairman of the British Steel Corporation

to ensure that the jobs of the workers are safeguarded.
If the Government have no power, the promises should not have been made in the first place and the review should not have been undertaken. However, the review has been undertaken and the promises have been made. In view of the statements and the hope given from this House, quite clearly if the Government do not have the power to implement them, they must bring in legislation to take it as quickly as possible. They must legislate to enable them to fulfil the promises made to the steel workers and to implement the decision resulting from the review.
I hope that the Leader of the House will be able to satisfy me on these points. I hope that in the coming months the Government will keep their nerve and not give way to the panic measures that are being proposed by the Opposition. I hope that the Government will keep on telling the Conservatives that they will undermine confidence abroad with their talk of gloom and disaster, and I hope that they will continue to try to secure the full support of the British working people for the economic policies they are having to pursue.

5.3 p.m.

Mr. Cranley Onslow: I had a moment or two to prepare a short speech, and I propose to be brief. I hope that the Leader of the House heard the remarks of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) and that he will respond to them. I do not go so far as to say that the law is as the hon. Member described it. I doubt whether what he said is correct. But there is undoubtedly much public anxiety on the matter and the hon. Member did nothing to allay that—in fact, I suspect that he has inflamed it. In view of that the Lord President should take the opportunity of making a clear statement of the law. If he cannot do that in concise terms, he should assure the House that a statement of authority will be made by one of the Law Officers in order to eliminate doubt and misplaced or exaggerated anxiety.
I want to do what I do not normally do on these occasions and that is to argue that the recess is not long enough. I have no particular quarrel with the date


on which it is to begin—it is essential that we should examine the economy in the debate planned for Thursday—but the Government, and the Leader of the House in particular, are expecting too much of us and of themselves in confining the recess to the relatively short period proposed in the motion.
The first and least important reason for my saying that is that I suspect that some hon. Members—perhaps even all hon. Members—will want to take an active part in the referendum campaign which will effectively be carried on during the recess. The hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), who seems so fond of swinging from comma to comma in the Common Market regulations, will no doubt be taking an active part in the campaign. Other Members will no doubt be doing their best.
It will not be the kind of recess during which Cabinet Ministers will be able to refresh themselves in whatever way Cabinet Ministers in this Government carry out that practice. They will be hyperactive, I suspect, and they will not benefit from the recess in any way. They will be even more tired at the end of it than they are already—and some of them are fairly tired now.
The Leader of the House is not noted for his super-abundance of energy. The Government Chief Whip is so exhausted that he slumped down on the Opposition Front Bench just now before eventually finding his way back to his correct place. Of course, he has a lot to put up with. We are glad to see the Secretary of State for Employment back after a brief convalescence, but no doubt he could do with additional rest. Then there is the Secretary of State for Industry. Everyone would like to see him take a good rest.
The opportunity which should be taken by those who are running the country's affairs to recuperate from their exertions, recover their balance, see whether they can find their missing marbles, and do all the other things the recess gives them chance to do, will be denied them. The campaign for this unnecessary referendum will intrude into the recess, which should therefore be extended for a week. The Prime Minister, in particular, should have the opportunity to rest. The impression he left upon the country after his television appearance was that he was a tired

man and that our affairs were not necessarily in the best hands so long as they were in the hands of a man so tired.
I see no reason to believe that the moment the referendum campaign is over the Prime Minister's troubles will be at an end. He may regard a referendum vote in favour of the Government's recommendations as a colossal vote of confidence in himself, and being the Prime Minister that probably is how he will regard it. But there is more to it than that, and more to the consequence of the vote than that. Whichever way the vote goes, there will have to be a change in the composition of this administration. Should the vote go against continued British membership of the EEC, the matter could be forced upon the Prime Minister by the unwillingness of some of his colleagues to remain in the Cabinet. That will give him a problem of reconstruction and reshuffle which Parliament and the country would be most reluctant to see arising from present circumstances.
If the vote goes the way the majority of us and most of the country hope it will, the Prime Minister will still not be relieved of the responsibility of making a change in his team. He may need a week or so to do that. There is therefore good reason for giving him that additional period of grace and for providing him with time to come to the House with a coherent set of plans prepared to deal with the situation which should have been dealt with so long ago.
The crisis of confidence in the pound will not be swept away by the debate on Thursday. To do that will need action, determination and resolution on the part of the country's leaders, and they will not muster those qualities in six months' of sitting on the Treasury bench listening to debate. It will take work which should have been started long since and which must be started now. If those efforts are to carry confidence they will need to be presented to the world as being carefully considered and carrying all the conviction of a logical, sensible and non-political reaction to the desperate plight of the country.
The Secretary of State for the Environment used the expression "the party is over". It might have been more to the point if he had made the remark at the Cabinet table, because the party is over


for those who believe that this country can any longer afford the enormous inflationary pressures which are built into the Government's policies. There must be a change. The country needs leaders who will speak for Britain, and if an extra week's thought gets us any nearer that, as it could, the House should not begrudge itself the time for thinking.

5.20 p.m.

Mr. George Cunningham: I am sure that all those concrete prescriptions for dealing with our economic ills made by the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) will be of great assistance to our Treasury Ministers and others concerned with finding those solutions.
This morning, in the Court of Appeal, judgment was reached in the case of Hubbard v. Pitt. This was an appeal from a decision reached some months ago relating to non-industrial picketing, namely demonstrations by people other than in pursuit of a trade dispute. Picketing in furtherance of a trade dispute is covered by statute and is protected. But picketing or demonstrating, other than in pursuit of a trade dispute, is not so protected. It is subject to the common law, and the law, as is usual with English common law, is rather vague.
The result of the decision this morning is that it is now clear—it was previously unclear—that no one has a right to do anything on the highway, which includes the pavement, except to pass along it and to engage in restricted activities absolutely incidental thereto.
That decision means that many activities which are carried out every day of the week in the country under the very eyes and noses of the police, with police permission, full acquiescence and no interference, are clearly now unlawful. More seriously, perhaps, those who agree among themselves to carry out those demonstrations are, because the action is unlawful, guilty of criminal conspiracy. I can relate this subject to the recess more closely by saying that many hon. Members and their supporters on one side or other of the referendum campaign will, as a result of this morning's decision, clearly be engaged in unlawful activities in demonstrating their support for, or opposition

to, membership of the Common Market during the next fortnight. In arranging such demonstrations some of them at least will be guilty of criminal conspiracy.
The case which concluded this morning arose from an incident in my constituency, which is why I take a special interest in it. I was glad that Lord Denning dissented this morning from the majority verdict of two to one. It is encouraging that Lord Denning was able to find that even the law as it now stands, without statutory intervention, should permit a person to demonstrate on the highway provided that he does not obstruct the highway or cause a direct nuisance—other than merely by demonstrating—to other persons using the highway. This morning he seems to have demonstrated what is called in the legal profession judicial valour, or the extension of a precedent, the broadening of a precedent, rather than the narrowing of it from case to case.
As a result of this morning's decision, I think that it is incumbent upon the Lord President—I think of him as much in his capacity as chairman of the legislation committee of the Cabinet as I think of him as Lord President—to take an early opportunity to declare that the Government will attach a clause to an early Bill dealing with the civil and criminal law, or the nearest Bill to that subject which will come in the next year, so as to remove this subject from legal uncertainty and to provide for it by statute.
It is clear that some subjects about which there are demonstrations have nothing to do with trade disputes but are just as important as, or even more important than, a trade dispute. Anyone demonstrating in 1956 about Suez could hardly be said to have been demonstrating about an unimportant subject. Therefore, it is as important to protect the citizen's right to demonstrate on such matters as it is to protect his right to demonstrate in furtherance of a trade dispute.
There is a more serious aspect of the question created or confirmed by the decision of the Court of Appeal this morning. Throughout the country demonstrations are taking place every day of the week. The police permit them to


happen. The police permitted the incident in my constituency to happen. Therefore we have a situation in which the public do not know whether action will be taken against them by the police, because the police can, if they choose, take that action. The police have always had a wide discretion in bringing prosecutions. But we should limit that discretion to the greatest extent practicable because it is contrary to the rule of law and good democratic practices that the public should feel not only that they are in the grip of the law but that they are in the grip of a too wide discretion to apply the law which is placed in the hands of the police.
Therefore, I ask the Lord President in his capacity as chairman of the legislation committee to take note that there is clearly since this morning a need to clarify this aspect of the law by statute and to take the earliest legislative opportunity to correct the position adopted this morning by the Court of Appeal.

5.27 p.m.

Mr. Donald Stewart: I submit that we should not adjourn on Friday week in view of the urgent and desperate situation of the inshore fishing industry.
I was glad to hear the Minister of Agriculture say in the House recently that he had acquainted the EEC Commission of the necessity to change its fisheries policy. That is to be welcomed. I hope that that will succeed. However, that is a long-range proposal.
I wish to mention the question of extending the fishing limit to 50 miles, which is demanded by the inshore fishermen. The reply on each occasion was that we could not take unilateral action. I investigated this matter in the 1960s when I was serving in local government. We asked the Government of the day to extend the limit to 12 miles. Invariably the reply was that the Government did not wish to take unilateral action. Britain was one of the last of the North Sea countries to extend the fishing limit to 12 miles.
It is no use the Minister of Agriculture replying that he might obtain a good agreement at the Conference on the Law of the Sea, as the end of inshore fishing, especially for herring, might be in sight

within weeks rather than months. It would be small consolation if at the end of that time a sound agreement had been reached at that conference.
The Government must be aware of the depredations made by foreign vessels. The Danes are the worst offenders, although the Norwegians and Russians also offend by fishing on an industrial scale and denuding the fish stocks. It will be a tremendous loss to our food supplies, as well as to the industry, if the fish disappear. The industry is going through a bad time. The Government should consider imposing a moratorium on the repayments for fishing vessels, which are very high—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am reluctant to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but if he would occasionally link his remarks to the motion about the recess it would be a great help.

Mr. Stewart: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. For that reason, before the House goes into recess there is urgent need for a debate on this subject. If the Government do not place a moratorium on the repayments, they will be obliged to repossess the vessels, which would be an impossible situation. The fishermen are finding it very hard to make the repayments. I ask that we do not adjourn until we have had a debate on the fishing industry.

5.21 p.m.

Mr. Ron Thomas: I, too, appeal to the Lord President not to adjourn the House until we have had an opportunity to discuss the management of the exchange rate. We heard from the hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) his view of what determines the exchange rate of sterling. We read daily in our newspapers that the Bank of England, "authority", the Treasury or the Government broker has intervened or has not intervened in the market, has intervened slightly or intends to intervene, and so on.
Although I support the referendum and shall do all I can to persuade the people I know to hang on to their self-determination and vote "No", I feel reluctant to go home until we have had a debate on the mechanism of the management of the exchange rate.
This morning The Times referred to possible light Bank of England intervention to slow down the decline in sterling. Elsewhere I read that there was an intervention "for technical reasons". As a back bencher I feel the need to explore the executive control of sterling and the exchange rate. The way that sterling is managed has vital implications for our balance of payments and our economic strategy.
Some years ago there was much more direct intervention. Indeed, there was intervention on both spot and forward sterling. Then the pound was floated, and that was one price we had to pay for Common Market entry. We were told that the floating of the pound would enable Britain to become more competitive, but the 20 per cent. immediate devaluation of the pound when it was floated made a considerable contribution to our £2,400 million annual deficit with the Common Market countries. I am reluctant to go back to the beautiful city of Bristol while these machinations are going on.
The hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury is not here, but I hope he will accept what I say in the spirit in which I say it. He insulted our intelligence when he insisted that the value of sterling was determined simply by supply and demand. Even when our exports and imports have been in a healthy position—in 1961 Britain's trade performance was extremely good—there has been ample evidence of the massive movement of speculative funds. Speculators felt that they could make a profit by moving into a market, thereby creating the downward slide of sterling, and then coming back into sterling and making profits—many would say obscene profits. Since the float, and especially in the last few weeks, it has almost looked as though there is no executive policy. At least, I find it difficult to discern any policy.

Mr. Hooson: Is it not a feature of the present situation that there is little evidence of speculation? Considering the state of sterling, how can any speculator have made money out of sterling recently?

Mr. Thomas: One finds, if one looks at previous speculation against sterling by British companies, multinational companies

and British banks, that we did not know about that speculation until after the event. We always get a post-mortem. I am convinced that speculation is going on at the moment and that when the speculators have driven the pound sufficiently low they will come back and make a good profit. I am not so much concerned with that as with the mechanism for controlling the parity of sterling.
In recent weeks it has been difficult to discern any policy. Towards the end of April, according to the Financial Times, the Bank of England was keeping its hand on the tiller. The custom is to use these naval metaphors—I do not know whether they come from the former Leader of the Opposition. At the end of April the banks or the authorities—we are never quite sure who—were deliberately intervening in the market and pushing up the rate. Since then, according to all the reports, the Bank of England has refused to intervene. It is now being said that the Bank of England is deliberately doing this and will continue to do so until the day of the referendum.
The Lord President should respond to that challenge and make clear whether that is so. Many of us are concerned that before long it will be suggested that the Bank has been told not to intervene, that sterling will move downwards until the referendum, and that those who wish to bring Britain out of Europe will be told that a vote against the market is a vote against sterling. There is plenty of evidence that that is happening.
It has been shown time and again that to allow sterling to float downwards is detrimental to our balance of trade. Our exports are not sufficiently sensitive to changes in price to enable increased prices to be charged to meet the reduction in foreign currency earnings, and the rapid increase in import prices has been the main cause of the increase in the cost of living at home. I should like to see a thorough-ranging debate before the Adjournment on these and related matters.
We can no longer leave it to the City of London to continue with its laissez-faire ideas. The limited invisible earnings of the City cannot justify a continuation of the laissez-faire approach.
In this crisis situation we need far more rigid controls over the export of capital, linked with strict and discriminating import controls. Those measures are essential if we are to meet the present economic crisis. Not least important is to move back from the policy of the floating pound and to impose direct measures for keeping the pound in reasonable parity with other currencies, with direct intervention as part of executive policy.

5.30 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: The House should not agree to the motion for several reasons. If the House were to follow the advice given by the hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Thomas), it would find itself in a difficult situation. I would rather trust myself to the economists of the City of London than to the views put forward by the hon. Gentleman.
There are three other reasons for us not to adjourn. The first is that the Secretary of State for the Environment should come to the House and explain in more detail the reasoning behind his speech in Manchester last week stating that "the party is over". Is he supporting the interesting article in the Observer on Sunday by Messrs. Booker and Gray, who said, far more eloquently than anyone in the House, that there is sheer nonsense in local government housing finance when authorities such as the London Borough of Camden are building houses and flats at an economic rent in excess of £100 a week? I think that the Secretary of State should come here and say whether he intends to allow that sort of expenditure to continue or whether, at this late stage, he will say "No".
There are two other less world shattering and perhaps less contentious matters that I want to put before the Lord President. First, I hope very much that before the House rises an opportunity will be found for the Government to give their views on the Maxwell Stamp Report. There has been an appalling amount of waste of time and procrastination in the Home Office under both Governments over the report. It is most important that some decision is reached so that the public know that when they get into a vehicle it is safe, even if it is not a London Hackney Carriage. They should be

able to know that the vehicle is not driven by one of the pirates who wander round the streets of London in motor cars.
I say to the Lord President that there should be a statement before the House rises giving the result of the Government's consultations—consultations which have extended over some three years under both Governments. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be in a position to say that either a White Paper or a Bill will be introduced.
My second reason is more domestic. It concerns every Member who might find himself serving on a Select Committee. The Select Committee on Expenditure, and more particularly its Defence and External Affairs Sub-Committee, had a long-planned visit to Germany some three weeks ago. It was a follow-up of a visit paid some two and a half to three years earlier when, as a result of some of the observations which we made, it was found possible for the Ministry of Defence to make certain alterations, which the Government acknowledged made certain features of the Command more efficient and less costly. We went to follow that up.
After the date was fixed, along came the announcement that the committee was to be overseas in Germany on Budget day. From past experience, it is a fact that whenever Members go overseas and talk to the Services they are asked questions about what is happening in this country. That happens whether one goes on CPA visits to Jamaica or on Select Committee visits to Germany for evidence taking. I raised this matter, and I had a most courteous reception from the Lord President, but I do not think that he went far enough. I wanted the members of the Committee to be in a position to know enough about what had been going on in the House to be able to give intelligent answers, or at least as intelligent as if we had been in the House. I wanted that to be the position while we were in Germany for three more days after the Budget. All Members know that on Budget day a mass of documents are printed and are made available in the Vote Office the moment the Chancellor sits down. Those documents are printed at least 24 hours in advance.
I believe that it would be right for members of Select Committees who go


away on visits—they do not visit overseas countries for joy rides but on the business of the House, unlike other expeditions that occasionaly take place—to be in the position of having the correct documentation. I would have thought it possible in such cases for the documents received from the security printers to be bundled up and sent out either through the diplomatic bag or through the Commander-in-Chief, not to be opened until the Chancellor sits down. If it is said that there is a possible security risk, it means that the security printers are regarded as being more trustworthy than Members of Parliament or the Queen's Messengers, who carry diplomatic bags. I do not believe that that is a tenable argument.
On the assumption that on this occasion it was not possible for that to be done, I made inquiries whether the documents could be flown out on a Service aircraft. The answer was that there was no Service aircraft flying there at that time. I then asked whether they could go out on the civilian aircraft that takes newspapers to Germany to be made available first thing the following morning. I was told that that was possible but that there would be a charge of £8 for the package. However, the Accounting Officer of the House was not prepared to pay £8 as he had no authority to do so. I accepted that and I am not querying his right to say that. What I am querying is the principle that Members of Parliament who are abroad on Select Committee business should not be in a position to obtain such documents. In the case I have instanced, documents were not obtainable because the expenditure of £8 was not possible.
Before I can give my assent to this motion, I must ask the Lord President whether he will accept that Members who are abroad on the business of the House should have arrangements made for them to have such documentation as they may reasonably require. There are three ways in which that could be done. First, an item could be included in the House Vote which would make provision and which would give the backing that clearly the Accounting Officer, requires. Secondly, the Lord President might refer the matter for consideration. I accept that there may be more

than one way of considering the matter. The Lord President might agree to refer the matter either to the Procedure Committee or, more properly, to the Services Committee.
It is in that spirit, and not in taking up the suggestion that the Lord President is a tired man—if that is so he is probably too tired to take copious notes of the debate—that I would be satisfied if the right hon. Gentleman would give an assurance that he will do one of those three things so that Members who wish to be conscientious and wish to be properly briefed when they are abroad on the business of the House may be put in that position. In that spirit I hope that I shall not find it necessary to vote against the motion.

5.39 p.m.

Mr. Gerard Fitt: I rise briefly to support some of the sentiments expressed by the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell). I would not go all the way with him in asking for a limited debate of the cease-fire alone. I believe that Northern Ireland and all its problems should be debated not in Committee but on the Floor of the House.
It is quite some time since we had a debate on Northern Ireland. Many unfortunate and tragic things have happened since we last had occasion to debate the subject. It would appear from the remarks which have been made by the right hon. Member for Down, South that he is suspicious about what is connected with the present fragile cease-fire that now exists between the British Government and the Provisional IRA. I support him in his suspicions, because they are held by the whole community in Northern Ireland. Not only the majority but also many members of the minority population would like to know exactly what type of arrangement has been made with the Provisional IRA.
This matter has been brought to a head because of the brutal and callous killing of a young Belfast policeman—one of my constituents. That killing has brought the condemnation of the whole community in Northern Ireland on the IRA. It was an atrocious killing. That young policeman could not have been involved in any of the charges which have been laid against the RUC over many years because he was only 20 years of age. I


have no hesitation, as an individual, as the representative of that constituency, and on behalf of my party and the minority population in condemning unequivocally those responsible for the taking of that young life.
The House should be aware that although there has been a cease-fire of some description between the Provisional IRA and the British Army, for many families in Northern Ireland there has been no cease-fire. Quite a few people have been killed since the cease-fire came into existence. The vast majority, if not all, were innocent victims. Many were found assassinated. Others were killed in bars or shot at their own front doors. If the cease-fire ever existed, it certainly did not have any effect on those who lost their lives and left behind bereaved families.
We are inclined to think only of those who have lost their lives. We tend to forget that when there is an explosion many people—since the cease-fire came into operation I am sure that the figure must run into hundreds—have lost legs, arms, and suffered other injuries.
There is a serious need for Northern Ireland and all its problems to be debated in isolation from the cease-fire. Over the past few weeks we have seen many failing industries in Northern Ireland. They have had to be helped to stay in existence by the British Government. One gets the feeling that many more industries in Northern Ireland are in a precarious position. Of course the cease-fire is important, but many people in Northern Ireland who are trying to lead ordinary lives are also concerned about their homes and jobs. I ask the Leader of the House to treat this matter with the seriousness that it deserves.
There has been reluctance on the part of British Ministers to appear to be intervening in the Convention elections or in the Convention which is now sitting at Stormont. But that is not the right attitude. Sooner or later Northern Ireland and all its problems will have to be debated. If this House is given the opportunity to discuss Northern Ireland's social, unemployment and housing problems, those in the Convention will realise the seriousness of the position. Indeed, it may compel them to take a

more reasonable attitude, recognising all the divisions which exist.
If the British Government do not make clear their attitude to Northern Ireland and its problems, politicians—I am not limiting this to one section of the community may take hard line, rigid attitudes which will spell the failure of the Convention. In such circumstances we would have to debate Northern Ireland and the failure of the Convention on the Floor of the House. Therefore, it would be wiser for the British Government to allow a debate to take place so that we may be aware of all the circumstances. Certainly the cease-fire is important, but all the other problems should be discussed as well.
Sentiments have been expressed on a number of occasions by Unionist Members about the opportunity of discussing the Gardiner Report. We have been told that that report, which is of such importance to Northern Ireland, has been shelved. The whole community in Northern Ireland wants to know the British Government's attitude to detention and all the other issues contained in the Gardiner Report.
I echo what was said by the right hon. Member for Down, South. But we should not discuss the cease-fire in isolation or Northern Ireland and its problems in Committee. The whole problem of Northern Ireland should be discussed on the Floor of the House as urgently as possible.

5.46 p.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Pattie: I wish to speak in opposition to this motion because there is a matter which I think the House should consider before going away for a two-week recess at Whitsun. It is in the best traditions of the House to consider urgently any matters which reveal injustice and inequity. I have in mind the working of the regulations for compensating the families of Service men killed in Northern Ireland and the working of the regulations for compensating Service men wounded in Northern Ireland and invalided from the Services.
This whole matter is governed by the Criminal Injuries to Persons (Northern Ireland) (Compensation) Act 1968. Starting with the soldiers killed in service, it seems that compensation for the next of kin in some cases is paid and in others


it is not. For example, the figures which I have taken from The Sunday Times of 9th February show that 110 next of kin have been compensated and 115 have not.
The question at issue is the amount of compensation paid to the next of kin of Service men compared with that paid to the next of kin of civilians. I am well aware that the governing principle behind the legislation is taken to be the loss of future earnings. Obviously the family of a man in business in Northern Ireland who has been rather successful could easily be shown to have suffered a serious loss by the number of years that he would have earned sizeable sums of money. However, the next of kin of a 20-year-old single soldier with no dependants would get a very small sum indeed.
I do not wish to detain the House unduly with a large number of cases but there is one case which shows the degree of inequity. It is the case of the bookmaker and the major. It sounds as though it has just been decided by the High Court, but it has not. They are two separate cases.
The bookmaker was Mr. Larry McMahon who left an estate worth £206,000 and his next of kin received a criminal injuries award of £100,000. It is easy to see how that sum was computed, and I am not arguing about that.
Major Richard Jarman of the Royal Engineers was blown up, like Mr. McMahon, by a booby trap. At 41, the major was three years younger than the bookmaker, and he also left a widow and four children. The Army was able to show that Major Jarman had a bright future. In fact, it was confidently predicted that he would have become a colonel by the time he reached 44 and probably a brigadier a year or so later. The report in The Sanday Times states:
Armed with this information, the Northern Ireland Criminal Injuries Board—which is now paying personal injury awards totalling £6 million annually—calculated the Jarman family's loss. The board's recommended award was a mere £22,876.
That was increased somewhat later, but, by any standards, it was well short of the sum given to the bookmaker's family.
I quote again from this article:
When Trooper John Gibbons, aged 22 and attached to the Parachute Regiment, was killed by a border landmine on May 5 last year, he

left a widow aged 20 and a son aged two. Mrs. Gibbons was awarded just £1,000 by Armagh County Court.
Two questions arise when we consider the matter of Service men who have been injured and invalided out of the Service. There is the question of the anomalies between what one person received and what another person received, and there is also the question of the considerable time lapse between the injury and the award of the sum.
I first became aware of this problem, as of many other matters—and I am sure other hon. Members have experienced this—from constituency correspondence—from a letter from a constituent who said that he wished to appeal against an award of about £2,000 given to him in Belfast. He had been told that he could appeal and instruct a solicitor in Belfast but that he would have to go to Belfast at his own expense. He was a lorry driver by trade. No doubt, he would have to stay several nights in Belfast while the case was heard. This was some 18 months or two years after the injury had occurred.
I should like to cite some examples of injuries that have occurred. The same article in The Sunday Times states:
Typical judgments affecting less seriously injured servicemen include £12,500 to an Army lieutenant for the loss of a leg and £9,000 to a 23-year-old Royal Marine for a bullet in the hip which has crippled him for life and led to his discharge. These cases may fairly be set against those of three Ulster civilians compensated in the Northern Ireland High Court for the treatment they received after being arrested by security forces when internment was introduced in 1971. The three received agreed damages of £16,000, £12,500 and £11,250 respectively. Their only physical injury was chafing from handcuffs.
Having cited these examples I do not intend to detain the House much longer. I assure hon. Members that these examples are not special pleadings. There are many more cases apart from the ones I have selected. I should like the House to press the Lord President for an early consideration of this matter, because there is great inequity and injustice here.
With all respect to the hon. Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies, we are only too happy to see Service men doing our dirty job in Northern Ireland on our behalf. Let us be quite clear about this. They have to do that. However, as soon as they happen to be struck down by snipers


bullets we give the impression as a country that we turn our backs on them and tell them that they have to undergo the laid down procedure.
Another point to be noted is that the injury has to stabilise. In other words, according to the jargon of the Department of Health and Social Security, we have to assess how badly injured a person is. A chap may actually slightly recover. Goodness me, the nation might have paid £1,000 to someone who lost a leg and that person may be more cheerful than might have appeared at the time. We owe it to Service men in Northern Ireland to put forward some kind of scale so that we can say quite clearly "If anything happens to you or your dependants a scale is laid down and will be activated very quickly; there will be no time lag and any court proceedings you have to go through will be at Government expense".
Therefore, I hope that the Lord President will consider that this matter should be examined very soon.

5.54 p.m.

Mr. Frank Hooley: I should like to suggest to the House that we should not adjourn until the Government have made a clear statement about how they see the evolution of the steel industry over the next two years in the perhaps, unlikely context of Britain's continuing membership of the Common Market.
I certainly need not impress upon the House the importance of the steel industry, which is one of the basic industries of this country, and its importance to the future livelihoods of many thousands of men and their wives and families. Within the last few days there have been some rather serious suggestions in the Press that many thousands of steelworkers—no doubt some of them from my constituency in Sheffield; certainly many people in Sheffield would be likely to be affected—might lose their jobs if some of the proposals which have been aired lately are put into effect.
Related to this matter is the power of the Government and of this House to affect and determine the development of the steel industry in Britain in the light of the commitments that we have undertaken under the Treaties of Rome and Paris, by which, depending upon the outcome

of the referendum on 5th June, we have to abide. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House may possibly reply that the Government have set out their views on the White Paper on Membership of the European Community, Cmnd. 5999. I put to the House and to him that this document is vague, ambiguous and unsatisfactory. On pap, 7 it states
Steel is more difficult, partly for inherent reasons, partly because of action taken by the previous Government when they repealed Section 15 of the Iron and Steel Act.
The White Paper goes on to say that repeal of that section of the Iron and Steel Act, which destroys the control of the Government and of this House over investment in the private sector of the steel industry, is unacceptable. It says:
it is unacceptable that the private sector should be free to expand where it wants and by as much as it wants thus adding to the inflationary pressure on resources, quite apart from the location and regional problems, for example, in areas where steel men have been made redundant by technological change".
However, the only remedy which this document proposes—and this is something on which the Government should say more before my constituents are expected to cast their votes on the 5th June—is that it might be necessary to ask for treaty revision if there is no other way of solving this problem. With great respect, I do not think that that is a satisfactory position in which to put 220,000 workers in this great and important industry or that it is satisfactory to say that the essential part of the control of invest-men, development and future of this industry may depend on the willingness, presumably of other countries of the Community, to agree to some revision of the Treaties of Rome and Paris.
In pressing for a statement on this matter I am entitled, before the House goes into recess and before we agree to this Adjournment motion, to remind the House of some of the powers which we have abandoned under the Treaties of Rome and Paris in respect of the steel industry.
We have renounced power to control investment in the private sector of that industry. The private sector is, of course, immensely important in Sheffield. We have also renounced power to give the British Steel Corporation directives on prices and directives on any complaint


from the private sector. In effect, the Government and the House no longer control the effective development of this important industry.
By contrast, the strength of the European Commission is immense. It is based on exclusive jurisdiction in a wide sphere of pricing and commercial policy, on its power to demand prior approval of certain investment projects and, of course, on the basic philosophy of competition enshrined in the appropriate treaties. The Commisison has control over specialisation agreements, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions. It has powers to fix prices and conditions of sale. It has certain powers in respect of loans from Community funds by which it can be selective and can steer development on the lines which the Commission, rather than the Government of the day or this House, considers desirable within the European Community.
In particular, there is a power under Article 58 of the Treaty of Paris for the Commission to impose a system of production quotas if there appears to be a crisis—the technical term is "manifest crisis"—in the production of steel within the Community. It is true that under this article, when taking a final decision on the question of production quotas, a recommendation by the Commission could be overruled or set aside, or perhaps modified, by the Council of Ministers. However, in these circumstances, since the application of Article 58 is now being discussed, and has in fact been invoked by one of the French Ministers, before any recess and before constituents in Sheffield at any rate, and probably in other parts of the country, cast their vote whether we should continue within the European Community, it is fair that the Government should make some pronouncement on the application of Article 58 of the Treaty of Paris. The Government should state whether we would accede to recommendations by the Commission if the production quotas involved the cessation of production or savage limitations on production in important steel producing plants in Britain, such as that in Scunthorpe or those elsewhere.
The matter has been discussed in the bulletin of the Community, in the document called Agence Europe. This points

out that there is not merely an economic issue here but a very important political issue—on which my constituents and the House are entitled to have the Government's views. Referring to the request of M. Jacques Ferry for the application of Article 58, this bulletin says:
It is in fact thought in relevant Commission circles that on the one hand the short-term economic situation on the steel market has not yet become serious enough to warrant recourse to the measures laid down in the ECSC Article 58. These measures contradict the liberal policy which the Community is trying to promote at a time where the tariff negotiations are starting in the context of GATT. A limitation on imports … would in fact threaten to affect the Community's credibility in the field of trade policy and international trade which the Nine say they want to develop.
As for the setting of production quotas, provided for in Article 58, the Commission's reticence may originate in the fact that there could be negative reactions in the United Kingdom where the opponents of Community membership could exploit the use of such power by the Commission which would be regarded as excessive and implying an abandoning of sovereignty during the campaign for the referendum on the maintenance of Great Britain within the Community.
That is very fair comment.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: In relation to the case the hon. Gentleman is putting forward, is he aware of the large sums of money that Europe is advancing for the British steel industry?

Mr. Hooley: If the hon. Gentleman had been listening to me, he would have heard me specifically refer to that fact. I also pointed out that by making these sums available the European institutions have certain powers to direct investment where they think fit, which may not be in directions which this House or my right hon. Friends in the Cabinet would think fit. The power to make loans gives certain powers to the lenders which may or may not be acceptable to this House and which, in the present context, are certainly not acceptable to me.
These articles and the proposals which are being floated are by no means academic considerations of treaty powers. In Sheffield we have already had a very unfortunate situation in recent months, when the European institutions intervened to prevent the British Steel Corporation from acquiring an important stake in the special steels sector of the Sheffield industry. This intervention aroused widespread resentment among the workers


involved in the firm concerned and consideration that Britain should think very carefully indeed before continuing within a treaty framework which so seriously limited the powers of the Government and of this House.
Finally, there is abroad a very serious suspicion that the very drastic and rather high-handed proposals of the Chairman of the British Steel Corporation for savage redundancies within the steel industry over a very short period and during a period of economic recession are not unconnected with our possible continuing membership of the European Community. It is believed that if the people of Britain do decide on 5th June that we should continue as a member of the Community, the British Steel Corporation will have powers to pursue its own policy on redundancy, investment and development, which this House and the Government will not be able to check.
In those circumstances I believe I am entitled to ask that before the House passes the motion for the recess, there should be a statement of Government policy on these matters.

6.7 p.m.

Mr. William Craig: In opposing the motion, I intend to be very brief, but in being brief I would ask the Lord President not to underestimate the seriousness of the point I raise.
We all have many reasons for opposing the Adjournment motion. Mine is based on what I feel is the need to defend the reputation of the security forces in Northern Ireland, in particular the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the Royal Military Police. I was horrified when I learned yesterday that three members of the RUC and a member of the Royal Military Police are having charges preferred against them arising out of their conduct in the course of duty. However, what caused me to be horrified was not the fact that charges were being preferred. It is right that charges should be preferred if there is a prima facie case to answer. The reason why I was horrified was the manner in which it was being done. We remember particularly the experience of a year ago when a member of the RUC was charged under the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act. There was fierce resentment in the

RUC that his case was being treated in the same way as that of a terrorist under laws and procedures designed to deal with terrorists. Indeed the RUC felt so strongly about it at the time that they withdrew their services from some aspects of their duty towards the courts.
This matter was clearly of concern to the Government at that time. It was duly considered by the Gardiner Committee. The Gardiner Committee has commented on it in paragraph 62 of its report. It is another of the incidents that makes one regret that we have not dealt with this very important report at a much earlier date. However, the Gardiner Committee felt that it should recommend to the Attorney-General that he exercise his discretion in certifying offences under the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act when he considered it to be in the best interests of justice. I urge the Lord President to convey urgently to his right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General the need to look at these four cases. I have heard from the Police Federation that their feelings are just as strong as they were a year ago, and no doubt the feelings in respect of the Royal Military Police are of a similar kind.
No one here is trying to evade the issue or to indulge in a cover up. What we are saying is that if members of the security forces have something to answer for, then their case should be heard in the ordinary way in the ordinary courts of the land, and they should be entitled to trial by jury. It may be a very small point, but it is one of very considerable importance to all of us. If we were asking our police and security forces to do what has already been referred to as a dirty job, it is up to all of us to see that they are fairly treated and that the full standards of British justice are applied to them.
I should like to refer briefly to another aspect of the Gardiner Committee's Report, and that is the special category prisoners. The Gardiner Committee had no difficulty in finding that the creation of such a category of prisoners was a serious mistake. Indeed, the Committee went so far as to say that it doubted the legality of the creation of such a status. That report was in our hands in January of this year, and to the best of my knowledge no consideration has been given to


remedying the serious mistakes, or to correcting what may be an illegality. Indeed, we seem to be just drifting, because the Price sisters, who were convicted of serious crimes under this jurisdiction, have now been transferred to a prison in Northern Ireland and have been accorded special category status. I find this quite extraordinary in the light of what the Gardiner Committee said.
I am concerned, too, from another aspect, because once the contents of the report became public quite naturally there was a great deal of discussion among prisoners about its import and among the families of prisoners. There have been suggestions from prison authorities and from Government sources that consideration has been given to the introduction of increased remission on a parole system similar to that prevailing in Great Britain. That naturally has built up hopes and anxieties in certain quarters, and everything is still in the air. It is a matter on which I feel we have a right to press for urgent action. We have a right to oppose the Adjournment motion. I hope that the Lord President will see that the necessary steps are taken without delay.

6.04 p.m.

Mr. Stan Thorne: I welcome what hon. Members from Northern Ireland have said on this question of the debate on this Motion because it seems to me that there are outstanding matters in Northern Ireland which will bear some sort of fruit over the next two or three months and which the House ought to be debating. I am a little concerned, however, that hon. Members, on the benches opposite at any rate, are again emphasising the security aspect in Northern Ireland rather than addressing themselves to the problem of unemployment, the problem of the economy in Northern Ireland and various other factors which the House ought to be debating in an overall consideration of the state of the British economy.
I will not deal with Northern Ireland in any depth. I will not deal with the question of world poverty, which is something this House never gets to grips with in an attempt to see how we can contribute to overcoming it. We touch on it in a peripheral way from time to time,

but we never get down to an appraisal of the issues involved. It would in itself be good grounds for delaying the Adjournment of the House if we were to have such a debate.
We could refer, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley) did earlier, to the lack of quality that appears to exist in some of the information we get from Government circles about the meaning and value of membership of the European Economic Community. It seems to me that some of the documents which do not see light of day have considerable significance in terms of allowing the people the maximum opportunity to decide "Yes" or "No" in the forthcoming referendum.
It is, one might suggest, a matter of lesser importance which I want to raise and which I think the House ought to debate before we go into recess, and it is not unconnected with the referendum on the Common Market. The Central Office of Information is a Government Department responsible for advertising and for giving notices to the Press from time to time about Government statements or Government policy. For example, if there is an increase in family allowances or a change in taxation, the Central Office of Information attempts to convey that information to as wide a range of people as possible.
In regard to the referendum, there is a postal vote available and it seems to me, and obviously to the COI, necessary to make known to the people the way in which they can apply for such a vote. All the national newspapers except one were used by the Central Office of Information for this purpose. The exception was the Morning Star

Sir Frederic Bennett: Surprise, surprise.

Mr. Thorne: The hon. Member for Torbay (Sir F. Bennett) says, "Surprise"; and it seems to me that that expresses in a word an attitude which I find completely unacceptable. What, in effect, is happening is that we are preventing the readership of the Morning Star from gaining access to information about postal voting in the referendum which we are prepared to provide for the readers of the Daily Express, The Times, and so on. In my view that is a form of discrimination


which is totally unacceptable in an institution which has always prided itself on its democratic status. If we are prepared today to accept this sort of discrimination, this sort of restriction on readers of the Morning Star, about whom tomorrow shall we be prepared to accept restrictions?

Mr. Russell Kerr: It will be the Labour Weekly.

Mr. Thorne: My hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Russell Kerr) says it will be the Labour Weekly. Quite possibly. It seems to me that our attitude towards a newspaper depends upon the sort of material it presents to the public. If it disseminates material which is critical of the establishment or of the values that seem to buttress our society, then it is regarded as open to question. I am trying to keep to the point.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I realise the hon. Member is trying, but he is not succeeding.

Mr. Thorne: I will try harder, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
The essence of my objection to the motion is that we should not adjourn on 23rd May but should stay in session in order to consider items of the utmost importance. I claim that discrimination against a national newspaper at a time when we are trying to provide the maximum information to the public on such a crucial issue is something we cannot tolerate.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Privy Council Office (Mr. William Price): As Minister responsible for the information service, may I answer that point? This is a subject of interest to me as an ex-journalist. The difficulty with the Morning Star is not to do with its political view. The problem is that it will not give us its circulation figures upon which to judge the effectiveness or otherwise of its advertising. I can assure my hon. Friend that no newspaper, Left, Right or centre, receives any Government advertising unless it provides circulation figures.

Mr. Thorne: Is my hon. Friend prepared to make a further statement if I produce evidence to the effect that at

least three other newspapers with circulations smaller than that of the Morning Star have been used by the Central Office of Information to disseminate Government material?

Mr. Price: Did those newspapers give the Government their circulation figures? That is the crux of the matter.

Mr. Thorne: I rather suspect that they did. My hon. Friend seems to be saying that he knew that the circulation of those papers was smaller than that of the Morning Star yet nevertheless they were given advertisements. I do not know what the readership of the Morning Star is. The circulation is probably about 30,000, a small number. The number of people who read it might conceivably be 10 times that figure. That does not seem to be terribly important in relation to this issue, which concerns the fact that some people are being deprived of information which others will receive. It is on that basis that I urge that we should not go into recess until there has been opportunity to discuss the matter.

6.22 p.m.

Mr. Michael Latham: Many of my constituents work in the city of Leicester and would be loth to see the House go into recess before a full statement is made by the right hon. Gentleman, first about the state of the knitwear industry and secondly about the state of the shoe trade, both of which are in a poor state. Many hon. Members have pressed hard for effective Government action. In answer to a Question put by me some weeks ago, the Prime Minister conceded that unfair trading was taking place and said that he intended to take action. No action has been taken so far.
It was said that working parties were to be set up. They have not been set up as far as I know. Letters have been going to and fro between various people in the knitwear industry, the Secretary of State for Industry and the Secretary of State for Trade. No significant action has been taken. Meanwhile substantial numbers of my constituents working in the knitwear and shoe factories in Leicester and the surrounding areas are on short time or are out of a job. I hope that the Lord President will impress upon his colleagues the need for an early statement.
I have written to the Government about the extremely unsatisfactory state which has arisen concerning the rating of caravans in East Lincolnshire. Many of my constituents who have caravans go there on holiday. They have now, for the first time, been served with notices of rating assessment as a result of a quirk in the law which has arisen from a recent decision. I have been in correspondence on their behalf, because many of them have written to me, with the East Lindsey District Council in whose area most of them live. The East Lindsey District Council has made it quite clear to me in a letter that it does not wish to charge those rates and has no administrative machinery so to do because not all the people who own the caravans live in East Lindsey. Many of them live in Leicestershire.
This situation requires emergency legislation. I have written to the Government about it. I hope that the Lord President will be able to say that before we go into recess emergency legislation will be introduced to deal with the problem.

6.25 p.m.

Mr. Marcus Lipton: The hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg) said that while he was on a mission in Germany he was not able to obtain certain documents relating to the Budget. I do not think that that could be regarded as an unreasonable deprivation. An hon. Member cannot be in two places at once. Many of the documents circulating at the time of the Budget debate are not taken up by hon. Members on the spot. If an hon. Member is anxious to obtain such documents at the earliest possible moment, he ought to be here to collect them.
The Lord President ought to pay attention to what could be a substantial economy. I refer to the circulation of parliamentary documents and papers to hon. Members. We get a lot of parliamentary papers in which we are not interested and which we do not want. It would be useful if many of those documents now automatically distributed were included on the pink slip so that hon. Members could obtain them on request. Large numbers of expensively-produced Bills are sent to hon. Members. Many

immediately go into the waste paper basket.
My next point relates to the considerable increase in postal charges. I represent a constituency which contains a large number of poor people who cannot afford the 7p which is required for a first-class letter. I suggest for the consideration of my right hon. Friend the possibility of a free postal service for the use of constituents who wish to write to their Member of Parliament.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Does the hon. Gentleman seek this reform before the proposed recess? Will he relate his remarks to the motion?

Mr. Lipton: I should like the Lord President to make a statement on the subject before the recess, which is why I am raising the subject now. Such a move would help to establish a close relationship between hon. Members and their constituents. This is particularly important for electors who cannot afford the 7p needed for a first-class letter.
It might be argued that this method could be open to abuse by people wanting to circularize hon. Members, public relations officers and so on. There is an easy way to overcome that. A constituent writing to his Member should send his letter in a hand-written envelope on which there could be set out the constituents name and address. That would prevent abuse.
I come now to the subject of New Palace Yard on which I hope that my right hon. Friend will have the opportunity of making a statement on Monday because I have a Question tabled for answer by him then. The latest information I have been able to obtain about New Palace Yard was that 4,000 tons of topsoil had been delivered at a cost of £10,000 for the purpose of covering the surface. I should like to know when we shall be finished with these operations and when we shall be free of these people who have been hovering around for a long time at vast expense. If my right hon. Friend cannot give me the information now, I hope that he can do so on Monday.

6.30 p.m.

Mr. John Peyton: We have just listened to a characteristically interesting speech from the hon. Member for


Lambent, Central (Mr. Lipton). I wonder whether the suggestion that our constituents should have free postage to us is really greatly to be commended. I do not suppose for a moment that our constituents would welcome the consequences of such a proposal, which would undoubtedly be responsible for added secretarial services here.
I was more in sympathy with the hon. Gentleman when he commented on the extraordinary pantomime which has been going on in New Palace Yard for a very long time. It has been long drawn out, in the same way as many of our national affairs. It has been ill directed, going first one way and then another. A lot of earth was recently moved in order to make space for a fountain which had apparently been forgotten. The hon. Member is absolutely right to call attention to a long-drawn-out, inefficiently-conducted farce, which I hope will soon be over, because it is a very bad advertisement for the way this nation runs its business.
May I refer briefly to the speeches made by the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell), the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) and the right hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Craig). I do not think that anything one could say in a short debate like this would be adequate or sufficient comment on the long-drawn-out agony of Northern Ireland. I hope very much that the Government will pay attention to the constant need to reassure opinion and try to keep it informed, so as to do something to hold back the tides of rumour and suspicion which I am sure have an undue influence upon affairs there. I understand the point made by the right hon. Member for Belfast, East, especially when he called for some defence of those whose care is the preservation of law and order.
It has been a somewhat varied debate. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) made a plea for an amendment of the law on rape. I do not believe that it would be within the capacity of the Government to secure this before the recess.
The hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), who is not now in his place, made a speech which may have achieved a high point of interest at one

stage. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that the hon. Member's speech on the whole was a fairly powerful argument for a prolonged and extended recess.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley), in my absence, declared his opposition to the European Economic Community and expressed his concern that the interests of his steelworks constituents should be protected. I am certainly not the first person on either side of this House to remind people quite modestly that many of those in the public sector of industry are doing their level best to price themselves out of jobs and, in the course of it, doing great harm to our national interest.
I come now to the real "villain" in this debate, the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson). The Lord President rebuked him that he was really making just the kind of speech that did great damage to the pound. I thought that the Lord President was allowing his capacity for rage to get the better of him. We are in a democratic assembly here, and it was really not entirely surprising that during the course of the debate, when we are considering giving ourselves a fortnight's recess from our labors here, someone might mention the fact in passing that the economy is not as strong and robust as we would like it to be.
The suggestion from the Lord President that that very modest speech from the Liberal benches was somehow the kind of thing that caused our economic weakness and damage to the pound was surprising. I am bound to say that I do not believe that the hon. and learned Member said anything in the course of his speech that was not well known to any casual observer of our scene, and I should be inclined to acquit him—I hope he will accept this acquittal—of having wantonly caused damage to our national interests this afternoon.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) said in an eloquent speech—he was probably right—that there should be no adjournment before the Government had produced some sort of package of economic measures. At any rate, we shall await with interest what the Government have to say before and during the economic debate, which is now to take place on Thursday of next week.
My hon. Friend put the blame fairly and squarely upon the shoulders of the present Government. This was despite having had the benefit, as I am sure he did, of listening to the Prime Minister's broadcast on Sunday. My hon. Friend very rightly pointed out—I hope that the Leader of the House will perhaps get this remedied next week—that we would like the Government to deal with the question of the inadequacy of the Estimates and the serious gaps in them. These Estimates have notably failed to provide for very substantial and well-known items of Government expenditure. My hon. Friend was absolutely right to point out that this kind of failure does much more damage to sterling and to the reputation of this country for honoring its obligations than any speeches made by backbench Members of Parliament.

Mr. George Cunningham: Is the right hon. Gentleman suggesting what would be a complete break with practice—that the main Estimates should include every item of expenditure expected to arise during the year?

Mr. Peyton: No, I am not. But if the system of annual Estimates is to mean anything, it must attempt to overcome this inadequacy. The National Enterprise Board is down for £50 million. There must be some explanation of the total amount of Government expenditure and how the money is to be raised. That is all I am saying, and I hope the Government will take note of the point eloquently and clearly made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury, who concluded his speech with the most gentle and restrained analysis of the individual responsibilities of particular Ministers.
The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding), whose presence we now all so greatly miss, rose to his feet and, with the indignation of some not particularly attractive lady who has never had any proposals at all, said that he would not have a coalition. That was something that we on this side of the House will have to endure with courage. The hon. Gentleman's speech was chiefly notable for a depressing acceptance of the enduring nature of the reasons for our being in the troubles we are in today. He had nothing to suggest as to how

attitudes might be changed to give this country any hope of recovering.
My hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) spoke with charity and understanding, of the need for Ministers to have a rest. He showed that remarkable perception for which he is known in diagnosing a certain tiredness in the Prime Minister, having obviously watched that television hour on Sunday. I make no comment on that, because I like to be known for my restraint.
My hon. Friend was right to point out that it is actions which are called for and not simply another debate. I am sure that, like me, my hon. Friend is looking forward to hearing what the Government have to say next week. He echoed the words of the Secretary of State for the Environment, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg)—"The party's over". It is remarkable that words like that can be uttered by a senior Minister and cause hardly a ripple throughout the party of which he is one of the leaders.
I find it surprising that, during the course of this discussion about whether we should adjourn for a fortnight over Whitsun, so few Government supporters thought it necessary to mention the state of muddle, confusion, doubt and fear into which their Government have led the nation's affairs.
I return to the Leader of the House. He has no right whatever to rebuke anyone in this House for calling attention, in the restrained fashion that the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery did, to the troubles of this country. Those troubles are not caused by any frankness or candor of speech in this House. They are caused by our constantly running away from the realities of economic life. The Leader of the House knows that. If he does not know it, he should do. The trouble is that the Government of which he is a leading representative will never face this fact.
Perhaps I might permit myself one remark about the Prime Minister's broadcast, and I put myself in order by saying that I hope we shall not have another before we go into recess. That broadcast made me think of someone driving along in a car and being asked what was round the next corner. All that the Prime Minister could do was look in


the rear mirror and say "We have just passed three motor cars and two container lorries". The possibility of the right hon. Gentleman and his Government looking ahead was shown then to be negligible. I wish that we had some reasonable ground for hoping that the fortnight's recess which we are obviously about to have would do something to bring the Government to their senses.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Mr. Short.

Mr. John Page: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Privy Council Office was right a little earlier to intervene from the Treasury Bench for three minutes on the matter of the Morning Star. As the curator or protector of back-benchers' rights, would the Leader of the House care to give those hon. Members who have been present throughout the debate one minute each in which to say what they have been waiting to say?

6.43 p.m.

Mr. Edward Short: There are a great many points to be replied to, and I shall do so as briefly as I can.
The hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt), who is not with us now, the right hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Craig) and the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) all referred to the situation in Northern Ireland. They spoke about the Provisional IRA ceasefire and the problem caused by the despicable and cold-blooded murder of a police officer in Londonderry.
The Government's policy on this is quite clear. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has been at pains to report to the House what has been happening. The House will recall his statements on 14th January, 5th February, 11th February and 12th March. In the course of one of them, my right hon. Friend said that a genuine and sustained cessation of violence would create a new situation and new opportunities for progress in Northern Ireland. He has also made it clear, following Saturday's tragic events, that the men of violence must take the consequences if they wish to go back to a campaign of violence.
The right hon. Member for Belfast, East raised four cases. I shall pass on

what he said to my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General.
A number of right hon. and hon. Members, especially the right hon. Member for Down, South, asked about a debate. I say at once that we have had much less time to debate Northern Ireland than I should have wished. But 10 per cent. of our time this Session so far has been devoted to Europe. The last general debate on Northern Ireland was on 5th December.
I invited the House to set up a Northern Ireland Committee, which it did. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made it clear to the hon. Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux) that the Government do not consider the ceasefire appropriate for discussion in the Northern Ireland Committee. However, my right hon. Friend wrote to the hon. Gentleman on 22nd April and made a number of constructive suggestions of the kind referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Preston. South (Mr. Thorne). He suggested that the Northern Ireland Committee might discuss economic and industrial problems, housing, future development policy, education or agriculture. So far, however, my right hon. Friend has received no reply to that letter. I hope that very soon it will be possible for right hon. and hon. Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies to agree on one or more subjects to be debated in the Northern Ireland Committee.

Mr. Powell: Will the Leader of the House explain why the Government consider the most pressing of all the problems of Northern Ireland and one on which clarity is required to be unsuitable for debate in that Committee?

Mr. Short: I said that we did not believe that this was a suitable subject to be debated in the Northern Ireland Committee.

Mr. Powell: Why?

Mr. Short: We felt that that was a more suitable forum for the kind of constructive subject that I mentioned.

Mr. Powell: Why?

Mr. Short: I hope that it will be possible very soon to agree on subjects, as the Scottish and Welsh Grand Committees do. They are functioning.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Has the Leader of the House kept the official Opposition informed of these exchanges and of the progress, or lack of it, in setting up the Committee?

Mr. Short: I am not sure about that. But the procedure adopted is the same as that which has been adopted for many years for the Scottish and Welsh Grand Committees. A subject is agreed among the Members themselves, and the Government, with the Minister concerned, accept the subject.

Mr. James Molyneaux: Will the Leader of the House confirm that I wrote to him on 13th February suggesting this very subject, which we felt needed close examination in the Northern Ireland Committee? We have never received any explanation of why it was considered unsuitable. I should very much like to hear the right hon. Gentleman's explanation this evening.

Mr. Short: This is a matter between the Members themselves and the Secretary of State, if we follow the precedents of Wales and Scotland. It is for Northern Ireland Members to talk to the Secretary of State and to agree on a subject. I hope that they will do that and sort it out among themselves.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: When the right hon. Gentleman speaks of "Members", does he mean Northern Ireland Members? Is the Committee to be confined to Northern Ireland Members? Is that his present thinking?

Mr. Short: The House itself has decided the constitution of the Committee. If the hon. Gentleman cares to look at the motion which the House agreed, he will see how the Committee is composed.
I repeat what I said just now. I regret very much that we have not been able to devote more time to debating Northern Ireland, and I agree with all that the right hon. Member for Down, South said about the importance of debate. It was for this very reason that I set up the Committee.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) mentioned the case of rape, the Director of Public Prosecutions v Morgan and Others. The

Home Secretary is aware of the concern which has been expressed about this judgment and he recently explained to the House that he is studying it closely. As regards the law on rape generally, my right hon. Friend has it in mind as part of the programme of modernization and codification of the criminal law to refer the law on sexual offences to the Criminal Law Revision Committee to consider as soon as its other commitments permit. I hope, therefore, that not only the law on rape generally but this judgment, which concerns many people, will be considered.
The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson) raised the general question of the economy. In view of what the right hon. Member for Evil (Mr. Peyton) said, I would say at once that of course I do not want to prevent responsible discussion. On a subject and at a time of such acute sensitivity, however, I feel that if the hon. and learned Member looks at his words tomorrow he will see that he was not being entirely responsible.

Mr. Peyton: rose—

Mr. Short: I did not interrupt the right hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Peyton: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will give way on this important point. I hope he will say to what words he objected. I listened carefully to the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Hooson).

Mr. Short: I am not going to be cross-examined by the right hon. Gentleman. No one interrupted him. He was heard in silence.

Mr. Hooson: The right hon. Gentleman has said that I used some words which were irresponsible. I am surely entitled to know what they were. I do not think that that remark is justified. It is the right hon. Gentleman who is behaving irresponsibly.

Mr. Short: If the hon. and learned Gentleman reads his words tomorrow and regards his words as responsible, I am afraid that neither I nor many other hon. Members will agree with him.
The situation in the economy is serious—I said this last week at Question Time and the Chancellor spelled it out


in the Budget debate—but it is not by any means hopeless. There are many very hopeful signs. [Laughter.] The Conservative Party is living up to its usual behaviour in this House. It is the worst behaved Opposition that we have had in my 25 years here. Every other speaker in this debate has been heard in silence. When I am called upon to reply, perhaps I can at least have a fair hearing.
As I was saying, there are many hopeful signs. The balance of payments problem is improving rapidly. Company finance, because of what the Chancellor did in his two recent Budgets, has greatly improved, as has the money supply problem. With money supply, the picture remains one of controlled growth, well below the growth of gross domestic product in nominal terms. Over the three months to March, the wide definition—M3—rose by no more than 2¼ per cent. The other definition, M1, rose a little faster, a little more in line with transactions, but certainly not at a pace which would be regarded as adding fuel to the inflationary problem. Therefore, compared with the record of the last Government, there is a success story on the money supply. There are hopeful signs.
The hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley), said that there was no easy way out, and of course I agree. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Golding) said that it was a matter for the good sense of the British people. I entirely agree. The only way in which we can get out of our problem is by our own efforts.
The hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury also said that a statutory incomes policy was no answer to our problems. I agree with him. The last Labour Government tried it, as did the Government of which he was a member at one time. In both cases the incomes policy came apart. For the last Government it ended in chaos with the three-day working week and the rest.
The hon. Member advocated massive cuts in public expenditure. He should tell us sometime—perhaps in the debate next week—what cuts he would make.

Mr. Ridley: I can tell the right hon. Gentleman now.

Mr. Short: Next week, if the hon. Gentleman gets an opportunity—and I

do not mean candle ends, either. They must be the sort of cuts which would make an impact on the kind of borrowing requirement that we inherited from his Government. He must tell us, first, the kind of massive public expenditure cuts that he would make and then what the result would be on employment. The Conservative Party cannot go on advocating mass public expenditure cuts without spelling out the consequences for employment.

Mr. Ridley: I can tell the right hon. Gentleman immediately what public expenditure I would cut—food subsidies, fuel subsidies, housing subsidies, the whole of the "Wedgwood Bennery" programme and the nationalisation on the scale predicted by the present Government. That would go half way towards meeting the needs.

Mr. Short: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would answer my second question. What would that mean for the cost of living and employment? He must give us the second instalment next week.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) talked about the unfinished business in this Parliament. All the unfinished business will be completed by the end of this Session.
My hon. Friend also referred to debates on the EEC. As I said earlier, so far this Session we have spent 10 per cent. of our parliamentary time on Europe. That is a pretty fair quota. There is a backlog at the moment, but that backlog will be cleared up, certainly after the referendum. As for the order which was dropped because it lacked one vote, I am afraid that the House has debated that matter and I cannot find any more time for it.
The debate on the EEC budget was delayed because the Chief Secretary to the Treasury was unable to give evidence to the Select Committee at the time, being deeply involved in the Finance Bill. He has recently been able to give his evidence, which the Select Committee has published in a special report. In the light of that evidence it is the Government's intention to debate the EEC budget as soon as possible. I hope that that will be shortly after the recess.

Mr. Spearing: I also mentioned the European Monetary Co-operation Fund,


having given notice of my intention to do so.

Mr. Short: I am afraid that I did not get notice of that, but perhaps I can write to my hon. Friend about it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley) raised the question of steel closure and redundancies. The BSC is facing serious problems as a result of the sharp downturn in demand for steel. When its representatives met the TUC Steel Committee on 5th May, they put forward proposals that would involve the loss of between 16,500 and 20,000 jobs this year. Those proposals were rejected by the TUC Steel Committee. I understand that the executives of the constituent unions are now discussing the situation in preparation for a further meeting between the corporation and the steel committee on 19th May.
The Government are deeply concerned about the situation. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry wrote to the Chairman of the BSC on 6th May. In reply he received three assurances—first, that no action taken to meet the recession will pre-empt the outcome of the Government's closure review; second, that any plants closed for lack of demand will be kept in a state enabling them to be reopened when demand improves, unless their permanent closure has been decided upon as part of the closure review; and third, that the BSC will take account of the union's views and any alternatives which they may suggest.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme and the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) also mentioned the Government's review. The relationship between the Government and the British Steel Corporation cannot be considered simply in terms of legal powers. The corporation has given its full co-operation to Lord Beswick's review of the industry, which involved consideration of the corporation's development programme and its social consequences.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme also mentioned the statement which was announced to be made today. I regret that, at very short notice, the House was disappointed at not hearing that statement on industrial demo

cracy. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade arrived back too late from an engagement in Liverpool to make some necessary amendments, but he hopes to make the statement before the recess. I shall certainly pass on to my right hon. Friend the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme.
The hon. Member for Woking made one of the most attractive speeches in the whole debate. He believed that a longer recess was a good idea, and I very much agree. Many right hon. and hon. Members will be deeply involved in the referendum. I certainly hope that they will be, and that they will play a full part on one side or the other and try to get a large turn-out and create much interest.
The House has still a great deal of business to deal with before the end of the Session. Therefore, two weeks is the most we can manage to have for the recess, but I greatly regret having to say that.
The hon. Member for Woking spoke about the enormous inflationary pressures inherent in the Government's policies.

Mr. Onslow: Hear, hear.

Mr. Short: Has the hon. Gentleman forgotten what the Labour Government inherited from the Government of which he was a member? This Government inherited only 14 months ago an enormous deficit on our balance of trade. Has he forgotten the enormous borrowing requirement? Has he forgotten the way in which his Government were spending money like water?

Mr. Onslow: rose—

Mr. Peyton: rose—

Mr. Short: I cannot talk against two hon. Members.

Mr. Onslow: Is the right hon. Gentleman's memory so deficient that he has forgotten—if he cares to put it in these terms—the Ossa he piled upon Pelion, the housing subsidies, food subsidies, nationalisation and all the folly and foolishness emanating week by week from the programmes for which he is responsible?

Mr. Short: If it is folly and foolishness to protect people who are worse off from


the policies which we inherited from the Tories, I agree with the hon. Gentleman.
The hon. Gentleman talked about inflationary elements inherent in our policies. Let me remind him once more of the balance of payments deficit and the enormous borrowing requirement—the biggest ever in our history in peace and war under the Conservative administration. Does he remember the last year and a half of his Government when they were spending money like water in every direction?

Mr. Peyton: rose—

Mr. Short: I did not interrupt the right hon. Gentleman. I sat here and took it. The right hon. Gentleman has to learn to do that. Does the right hon. Gentleman remember—because he was a prominent member of that Government—the 2 million unemployed when the Conservatives lost the election and the three-day working week throughout most of the country? That is what the present Government inherited.
The right hon. Gentleman talked about a motor car. It was rather an obscure metaphor, but the motor car we inherited and had to jump on was travelling at 100 miles an hour, out of control, down a mountain pass. It is not remarkable that we have not got it under control yet. That is a much more appropriate metaphor, it the right hon. Gentleman wants to talk about motor cars. If the Conservatives talk about the inflationary elements inherent in this Government's policies, they might look at some of the things we inherited from them.

Mr. Peyton: If the right hon. Gentleman is to make much, as he has done continually, of the borrowing requirement, he might remember what happened. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Government said that he aimed to halve an admittedly high borrowing requirement which they inherited from the Conservatives. However, the borrowing requirement has more than doubled. The right hon. Gentleman must remember that if he wants to talk on this subject.

Mr. Short: This was mostly in social benefits. One of the biggest additions to the borrowing requirement was for the increase to pensioners, who had to be protected from what we inherited. The right hon. Gentleman has now admitted that there was an admittedly high borrowing

requirement. It was the biggest in peace or war. That is what we inherited from the Conservatives. It is not remarkable that it is still high.
I turn to a calmer subject. My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Cunningham) raised the question of the decision of the Court of Appeal today. This is a complex area of the law, and I do not wish to comment on the effect of a judgment delivered only a few hours ago. The Government have had no opportunity to see the judgment. The majority of demonstrations do not obstruct passage along the highway, and the majority of public meetings do not take place on the highway. I see no reason why hon. Members should feel themselves inhibited by the law from expressing their views. However, this judgment will be fully considered by the Government urgently.
The hon. Member for Western Isles (Mr. Stewart) raised the question of inshore fishing limits. I accept that there is a real fear in the Western Isles, around Scotland and in my own area about this matter, and I shall certainly bear in mind the hon. Member's request for a debate on the subject. I shall try to fit one in before the end of the Session.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Thomas) raised the question of the exchange rate and asked for a debate on this subject. However, I have already said that we hope to find an opportunity next week for a full day's debate on the economy. This will provide an appropriate opportunity to deploy the kind of arguments that he raised today.
The hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Finsberg) raised three very useful points, the sort of points that I believe an Adjournment debate is all about. First, he raised the question of the Maxwell Stamp Report. We accept that there is a demand for legislation on taxis and private hire cars, both in London and in the provinces. In formulating draft proposals on this subject we shall certainly take into account the recommendations of the report. I shall pass on to the appropriate Minister what the hon. Gentleman said.
The hon. Gentleman raised the question of Members abroad. I thought that I had gone quite a long way to meet his


wishes in this matter. I arranged for the Ministry of Defence to fly the documents out on, I believe, the Wednesday morning. They were delivered to the hon. Gentleman and members of the Committee in Germany that Wednesday.

Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: The right hon. Gentleman did not help. The Ministry of Defence suddenly found that there was a plane going out. I am trying to establish the principle. I appreciate that he was trying to help, but it was the Ministry that suddenly found that the plane was going.

Mr. Short: I arranged for the documents to be put on that plane. That is not much help, but at least I did that.
The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of the speech by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment which included the phrase "The party's over". Local authorities are responsible for a major sector of public spending, and therefore any restraint in public expenditure must affect them. My right hon. Friend was simply making that point. The figures he gave were entirely accurate. He was perfectly entitled to make that point. Indeed, we are all entitled to make it over and over again.
The hon. Member for Chertsey and Walton (Mr. Pattie) raised the important and compassionate point of compensation for Service men killed or injured in Northern Ireland. The House will be indebted to him for raising this matter in such a well-researched and moderate way and will have a good deal of sympathy with what he said. Compensation to people is payable in Northern Ireland at present under the Criminal Injuries to Persons (Compensation) Act (Northern Ireland) 1968. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland said on 12th March that the operation of this Act was currently under review. I have just noticed that on the Order Paper for Thursday of this week there is a Question down to my right hon. Friend by the hon. Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend). I should not like to anticipate the reply.
My hon. Friend the Member for Heeley raised the question of steel. I have already referred to closures. He

also raised the problem of steel in the EEC. I should like to make it absolutely clear that there has been no pressure from the Commission to make cuts in manpower in the British steel industry. The Commission has no power on its own to order a cutback in production. Under Article 58 of the ECSC Treaty, the assent of the Council of Ministers is needed for any system of production quotas. No British Minister would agree to any decision which would damage the interests of the British Steel Corporation. The suggestion that the problem is being hushed up until after the referendum has absolutely no foundation. The corporation's proposals for cuts in manpower, which the Government have viewed with deep concern, were put forward in the light of its own assessment of the industry's position.
There is a problem about steel in the EEC which was not resolved in the renegotiation. If the referendum decision is to remain in, we must continue the renegotiation on steel. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has said, this may involve revision of the treaty. I should have thought my hon. Friend would have welcomed that assurance.
My hon. Friend the Member for Preston, South (Mr. Thorne) raised the question of injustice to certain newspapers which cannot get Government advertising. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Privy Council Office has given the correct and effective reply. If my hon. Friend the Member for Preston, South arranges for us to receive accurate circulation figures for those newspapers, we shall consider the problem. I considered it 10 years ago, when I put the same point and never received the circulation figures.
The hon. Member for Melton (Mr. Latham) spoke about the textile industry. The Government are well aware of the seriousness of the present situation in the industry, and I know that many hon. Members are worried about it. We recognise that when demand for its products is at its present low level, imports have a particularly significant effect. We have demonstrated our readiness to add to the industry's already substantial level of protection from low-cost imports whenever further restrictions can be justified. We recently introduced import surveillance arrangements which will enable us to


monitor promptly and precisely a wide range of textile imports and which will help us to decide what further action, if any, may be necessary.
The British Textile Confederation has proposed a 20 per cent. cut across the board on the level of imports. Hon. Members have vigorously pursued their campaign in support of that proposal. Such restrictions would have major implications for Government policy. However, we are carefully considering all the possible consequences of the proposal before reaching a decision.
The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of the footwear industry, of imports of men's leather footwear from Eastern Europe in particular. We are well aware that the high level of imports is causing great concern to the United Kingdom footwear industry. We have been holding a series of consultations with Czechoslovakia, Poland and Romania about the level of their exports of men's leather footwear to the United Kingdom. The discussions have taken longer than we would have wished but it is expected to be possible very shortly to make an announcement about their outcome. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will find the announcement to his satisfaction.
The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of mobile homes. There is a point here. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was in the House last Friday when the Mobile Homes Bill was discussed. He will see at column 182 of the Official Report for 9th May that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment replied on that point.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lambeth, Central (Mr. Lipton) made two useful suggestions, one to save money, which I shall consider, and the other to spend money by providing envelopes for constituents to write to their Members. When I was Postmaster-General in the last Labour Government I tried out a similar idea on a modest scale for retired people and people living alone. I shall pass on my hon. Friend's suggestion to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services to see what she thinks about it.
I am as much concerned as my hon. Friend about New Palace Yard. I understand that it is likely to be finished in the

autumn. The lime trees are to be pleached, but it will be some time before they reach out their arms to grasp each other.
On that note, I commend the motion to the House.

Sir Frederic Bennett: rose—

Mr. Walter Harrison (Treasurer to Her Majesty's Household): rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put; but Mr. SPEAKER withheld his assent and declined then to put that Question.

Sir Frederic Bennett: The right hon. Gentleman knows of my interest in a very human matter. I have done my best to raise with him whether we may have a definitive statement about our attitude towards the Vietnamese refugees, with particular reference to those stranded in Hong Kong. When I asked the right hon. Gentleman about the matter a few days ago, I think that he misunderstood. He referred me to a general Written Question, which I could not have seen then and which made it clear that the only refugees coming here would be those with close ties and connections with this country. There are obviously not many of them. As no such limitations were placed on the Chilean refugees, we are entitled to a statement to make sure that there is no element of double standards. These are matters of real hardship involving many thousands of people, including some for whom we have direct responsibility as the colonial Government.

Mr. Short: I know that the hon. Gentleman is very concerned about the question, as are a number of hon. Members. I replied off the cuff last Thursday. I remembered a Written Question down for that day, and I am afraid I breached the rules of order by quoting the answer. I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for that. I realise that it was not quite on the point he was making. I shall pass on to my right hon. Friend the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary what the hon. Gentleman has said and put the hon. Gentleman's suggestion to him.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House at its rising on Friday 23rd May do adjourn till Monday 9th June.

NATIONALISATION OF THE DUCHIES OF LANCASTER AND CORNWALL

7.16 p.m.

Mr. William Hamilton: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to take into public ownership without compensation the two estates known as the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall.
I hope that I shall be allowed to introduce this relatively non-controversial Bill without a vote.
I should like to spend a minute or two on each of the estates in question. As the estate agents would say, the Duchy of Lancaster is a very desirable estate. It has been in existence since 1265, the land having been stolen or taken from Simon de Montfort and the Earl of Ferrers. Nobody has ever satisfactorily explained why the revenues from both estates were not surrendered by the Crown within the terms of the so-called bargain struck in 1760.
I turn to one or two figures relating to the Duchy of Lancaster. In 1944 the total receipts from the estate were £154,791. In 1974 they were £1,226,966. Her Majesty the Queen's share of the swag was £100,000, tax-free, at the beginning of her reign. In 1972 –73 it had gone up to £295,000, and in 1973 –74 the Queen took £325,000.
I obtained some figures from the Treasury from which I ascertained that to have a net income of £300,000 in the year, unearned, which is what it was according to the Treasury, one would need a gross investment income of about £15 million in the year. I quote that figure as a measure of what the Crown is getting from what it chooses to describe as its private estate.
The year 1973 –74 was particularly good for income from what are called devolutions and forfeitures. For the benefit of the uninitiated I should explain that this is an income from the estates of people who die intestate and without traceable relatives. The whole of those estates go direct to the Duchy and in 1973 –74 they amounted to £164,825. In that same year rents provided £417,365.
It is not too well known that the accounts of the two Duchies, which are supposed to be private estates, are available

to Members not in the Vote Office but only on request in the Library. One has to have photocopies made because only one copy of the accounts is kept there. I have photocopies. From them one can discover that the salaries of the officials and functionaries in the Duchy of Lancaster in 1974 amounted to £94,532.
We as Members of Parliament may not know, are not allowed to know and never will know who is getting what for doing what. In other words, there is a complete lack of public accountability in these matters. To ask for information about the Duchy of Lancaster and still more about the Duchy of Cornwall is like trying to get information from the KGB. Journalists have told me that they have telephoned the Duchy of Cornwall office genuinely seeking information and have been told to mind their own ruddy business. So would I be, but I secured such information as I could garner from the annual accounts.
I turn to the Duchy of Cornwall. I shall give a brief historical outline of this estate. The Duchy was created in 1337 by Edward III with a Royal Charter—long before there was any element of parliamentary democracy—which created the eldest son of the monarch as the Duke of Cornwall. The estate was his of right, his private estate from that time onwards. That estate was originally stolen from the Earls of Cornwall. The Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall therefore have one thing in common—they were both the result of Royal looting. That is why I am proposing a Bill to nationalise them without compensation so that there will be no cost to the taxpayer.
The Duchy of Cornwall comprises about 130,000 acres located between the flower fields of the Isles of Scilly and the Oval cricket ground in Kennington, from the tenant farms in Dartmouth to tenement property in Lambeth. In 1974 receipts from this estate were £1,339,010, of which £773,682 was from rents. The same applies with the Duchy of Cornwall as applies with the Duchy of Lancaster in respect of people who die intestate without known relatives. That money goes straight into the coffers of the Duchy, and therefore straight into the pocket of the Prince of Wales.
Last year money from that source amounted to £31,181. Who gets the rake off here? One need only refer again to the annual accounts. One finds that the salaries of the functionaries, the lackies, the hangers on—call them what you will—amounted to £103,338 in addition to over £93,000 for the salaries and expenses of land stewards, collectors and so forth. Payments made to the Prince of Wales in 1974 amounted to £202,173 tax free. That is the equivalent of a taxable income of about £10 million a year.
No one has yet told me, and no one was able to tell the Select Committee on which I sat three or four years ago, why this income is not taxed. It is time that it was. It is time that we took this measure of nationalisation. We have a lot of nationalisers on the Front Bench and they have my whole-hearted support. I hope that I shall find them in the Lobby with me tonight if there is a vote.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. William Hamilton, Mr. Bob Cryer, Mr. Norman Atkinson, Mr. John Prescott, Mr. Dennis Skinner, Mr. Robin F. Cook, Mr. Bryan Davies, Mr. Mike Noble, and Mr. Russell Kerr.

NATIONALISATION OF THE DUCHIES OF LANCASTER AND CORNWALL

Mr. William Hamilton accordingly presented a Bill to take into public ownership without compensation the two estates known as the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall; and for the purposes connected therewith: and the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 27th June and to be printed. [Bill 161.]

Orders of the Day — CHILD BENEFIT BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

7.27 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Social Services (Mrs. Barbara Castle): I beg to move. That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I had intended to open my remarks by saying that I was sure that the Bill would be generally welcomed on both sides of the House, but I had not expected to begin with the Opposition Front Bench totally denuded of talent. I am glad to see that hon. Members have hurried into the Chamber in order to endorse what I am about to say.
It gives me the greatest pleasure to introduce the Bill, which I am sure will be accepted on all sides of the House. It achieves a long overdue merger between child tax allowances and family allowances into a new universal, non-means tested, tax-free cash benefit for all children, including the first, payable to the mother. In this way it ensures that the nation's provision for family support is concentrated first and foremost where it is needed most—on the poorest families; and that it goes to the person responsible for caring for the children and managing the budget for their food, clothing and other necessities.
It is appropriate that this measure should be put before Parliament in International Women's Year because it supplements the other measures that the Government have been taking to help women play their vital rôle in society. International Women's Year has always been just as much concerned with the woman struggling at home to bring up a family as with the aspirations of her career sister.
It may be premature to talk of giving the wife and mother her own wage, but she certainly needs control of her own budget if the family is to be fed and clothed. We all know how vitally important the family allowance has been—we have had examples of it brought to our attention in our constituencies—to many a hard-pressed mother, coming, as it does, into her hands in the middle of


the week just as her shopping money, probably inadequate in the first place, is ring low.
The increase in family allowance last month for the first time since 1968 has been a blessed reinforcement for her in her hour of need. This Bill, transferring, as it does, the child tax relief from her husband's pay packet to her purse in the form of a cash allowance covering the first child is a further recognition of the importance of the job she is doing for society.
The need for a merger of child tax relief and the family allowance has been recognised for a long time. The Labour Party in its 1969 document "Labour's Social Strategy" first set out its proposals for what later became its child endowment scheme. The Conservative Party took up this theme in its 1972 Green Paper which embodied a child credit in its overall tax credit scheme. As the House knows, I was a member of the Select Committee which examined our predecessors' proposals. As any member of that Committee would agree, one point soon emerged clearly from the Committee's examination—namely, that the women of this country would not tolerate the transformation of their cash family allowance into a tax credit which, by definition under a tax credit scheme, should be set against the husband's tax liability and therefore be swallowed up in his pay packet. Indeed, I presented a petition of over 300,000 signatures to Parliament at that time demanding that any support for children should be in the form not of a tax credit to the father but of a cash allowance payable to the mother through the Post Office. The Select Committee unanimously recommended that this should be done. This Bill is based on that formula.
It is right that I should at this point pay a tribute to the trade union movement, which has always supported that formula and which pressed it on the Select Committee through the evidence given by the TUC, although the unions frankly recognised that this formula would affect their members' take-home pay. Undeterred, Vic Feather—now Lord Feather—gave us some robust evidence to the effect that the mother's rights must be safeguarded.
No doubt the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler)—or whichever Front Bench Member leads for the Opposition—will claim that what we are doing is too little and too late. I see other hon. Members no doubt poised to make the same claim. That will be unnecessary because the policy is so universally accepted and recognised as meeting my party's requirements. There is therefore no need for there to be any critics behind me. There is, in fact, none behind me. However, if that is to be the claim we shall hear this afternoon, it will be typical of the Conservative Party. The Conservatives gave a promise in the 1970 Election that they would increase family allowances but still had not done so when they fell from office in 1974. Instead, we were given a Green Paper—a hopeful postponement was represented by the colour green—on an elaborate new tax credit scheme.
I hope that we shall not hear the pretence this afternoon that if hon. Gentlemen opposite were now in office they would be in the middle of introducing a scheme. They know perfectly well that their scheme was immensely costly because inevitably, under the structure of the tax credit scheme, the value of the credits had to be given to everyone regardless of need. Indeed, under the 1972 Conservative proposals, £745 million of the estimated cost of £1,300 million—that is, over half the cost—would have gone to those earning above average national earnings at that time, that is, those earning £1,600 per annum or more. Even those at the top of the income range would have received a bonus under the tax credit scheme running into a cost to the Exchequer of millions of pounds.
The Opposition know that the cost would be much greater today than the figure outlined in the Green Paper of 1972. Indeed, to achieve the social aims of that Green Paper would today cost £3,000 million. No wonder therefore that the Conservative Party was so careful not to commit itself in its election manifestos in the two elections of last year to introducing a tax credit scheme.
We were told in the manifesto last October that the Conservative Government would bring the scheme into effect in stages as economic circumstances permitted—a very cunning bit of hedging.


We were told that stage 1 would be the introduction of child credits, but there was no firm timing in the election manifesto even on that. Even stage 1 would be implemented, we were warned, only when economic circumstances allowed. Since the economic circumstances which the Conservatives bequeathed to this Government were hardly propitious, and since the main complaint that they have launched against us ever since we were returned to office is that we have increased public expenditure too much, it is hardly likely that we would have had a child benefit scheme from them, let alone a full tax credit scheme.
With the Shadow Chancellor, the right hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Sir G. Howe), accusing the Government, as he did in the House the other day, of gross overspending and demanding more and tougher cuts in public expenditure, does anyone imagine that he would, if he were Chancellor, be authorising at this moment the expenditure of £3,000 million on a tax credit scheme? I hope that we shall have no fictitious claims from the Opposition this afternoon.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke: As the Secretary of State will not say what the cost of her programme under the Bill will be, and as it was said in answer to Questions that we should have to wait to see what resources would be available in 1976–77, does she accept that she is not putting forward the best answer to the argument that this is too little and too late? If the Secretary of State wishes to address herself to that argument, will she accept the background that the actions of the Chancellor in refusing to raise tax allowances, as the Child Poverty Action Group has clearly shown, have had the effect of depressing the real living standards of low wage earners with families, who represent the target area? If the Secretary of State will not accept that as the background to what the Government have done so far, does she realise that those interested in this subject might regard what she has said as sanctimonious clap trap?

Mrs. Castle: One of the actions of my Government was to raise the family allowance without delay for the first time since 1968. The Opposition promised in the election of 1970 to raise the family allowances,

and received the support of the Child Poverty Action Group for their promise, which they have deliberately broken since then. As my speech evolves, let us wait and see where the argument lies at the end of the day. I start at that point. Last month we increased the family allowance to £1·50, the first increase since 1968. I shall have something to say about the attitude of the Child Poverty Action Group before I am through.
Our alternative policy has been to tackle poverty in two main ways—first, by our promised increase in pensions and other long-term benefits, an increase of 72 per cent. since we came into office, and secondly, by the increase in family support which I have outlined. We did that as quickly as possible. We did it despite the economic difficulties we faced because we believed that these groups needed help more, not less, when the going was tough. Hence this Bill.
What will the child benefit scheme achieve? First, and most important, the poorer families who have not been able to take advantage of child tax allowance in full, if at all, because of their low incomes, will in future do so, as the new benefit extends the cash advantage of the allowance to all these families. Those who are dependent on means-tested benefits will receive a larger part of their income from benefits as of right. Secondly, child benefit will be paid for every single child in the family, thus extending the benefit of a payment to the first child in 4 million families drawing family allowance as well as to the 3 million single-child families, thus doubling the number of children receiving benefit. Thirdly, once the scheme is operating, we shall have for the first time a single universal system of family support.
This brings me to the point which was raised by the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), which I have no desire to evade—why we have not put any figures of the cost of the scheme in the Bill or in the covering Financial and Explanatory Memorandum. The reason is that neither the extra expenditure involved, nor the net cost to the Exchequer after taking into account the effect on tax revenue, can be quantified now because they will depend mainly on the rate of child benefit, which


will not be decided until next year, appropriately to the circumstances that obtain next year. The scheme is, of course, potentially expensive, and the rate and thus the extent of the improvement—I emphasise "improvement"—will have to be settled in the light of the economic prospect at the time. As the Chancellor said in his Budget Statement, we shall need to accommodate the cost of the new scheme within the total which, in the light of future reviews, we conclude that we can devote to public expenditure at large in the years beyond 1976–77.
Some indication can, however, be given of how the costing of illustrative rates of child benefit would be approached on the hypothetical basis that the scheme would be introduced this year. For illustration, let us assume that, of the present three rates of child tax allowances, it would be the rate applicable to children under 11, currently £240 a year, which would be replaced by child benefits, and that the extra amounts for children over 11 would be retained as residual tax allowances.
On these hypothetical assumptions, and taking into account savings on other social security benefits, the child benefit rate, which would involve no extra net cost to the Exchequer, would be about £1·94 a week. Under this nil cost formula, of course, the poorest families below the tax threshold and not already on social security benefit would gain the full £1·94 for the first child and 44p for each other child. Every extra 1p on this rate of £1·94 would involve a net cost to the Exchequer of about £61½ million per year net of savings on other social security benefits. I must repeat, however, that this approach is based on illustrative assumptions and on current rates of tax, clawback, family allowances and child tax allowances and cannot be taken as anything but a very rough guide. The House pressed for illustrative figures and I have tried to give them. I hope that no unwarranted deductions will be drawn from the figures which I have given for purely illustrative purposes.
On the assumptions I have taken, the gross cost of a hypothetical child benefit rate of £1·94 a week would be about £1,450 million a year, or, after taking into account savings on other social security

benefits, about £1,330 million a year, which is what we are now spending on family allowances and child tax allowances at £240 per child. There would be no additional cost to the Exchequer, but public expenditure would show an increase of about £800 million a year to reflect the conversion into public expenditure of the present cost of child tax allowances.
I now turn to the starting date. As the House knows, it has proved physically impossible to launch the scheme until 1977, and this has been a great disappointment to me personally. It was certainly our original intention that the benefit would start in April next. The facts are these.
We need 2,200 staff centrally for this task and we need to house them in the Newcastle or Washington New Town area because FAM work is centralised at Newcastle where the relevant computer facilities are. It became clear early last year that the purpose-built accommodation we had on order would not be available for an April 1976 start. Arrangements were therefore made for us to have the temporary use of a large building being erected in the centre of Washington by Property Services Agency. All seemed well, but then, last autumn we learned that the completion of this building would be seriously delayed because high alumina cement had been used in the manufacture of pre-cast concrete units which formed an integral part of the construction of the building. These had to be tested comprehensively before construction could continue.
So that building could not be ready for a 1976 start either; and there was nowhere else available in the Newcastle-Washington area big enough to house so many staff and be ready for a start in April 1976. An April 1976 start meant, of course, getting into the building well before then, in the summer of this year. So we were forced back to April 1977. The scheme has to start in April because that is the beginning of the tax year and the benefit is in part a replacement for a tax allowance.
It was at this point that I determined that, given a 1977 start for the general child benefit scheme, something must be done in 1976 to help the one group of readily identifiable people whom, it is generally accepted, are particularly


disadvantaged amongst family groups, namely the one-parent family. So there is to be an interim benefit of £1·50 a week for the one-parent family for a year from April 1976 until the child benefit scheme comes into effect. This will bring immediate help at that point in time to over 250,000 such families who are not in receipt of supplementary benefit or of a social security benefit which, in the dependency allowance for the first child, already compensates for the absence of family allowance for that child.
It is necessary for me to refer only briefly to the contents of the Bill because it is mercifully straightforward compared with some of the complicated pensions legislation with which we have all had to deal. Therefore, I shall be brief because it is a short debate and I want to give hon. Members a chance to participate.
The first five clauses contain the meat of the Bill. Clause 1 provides for child benefits to be paid to a person for any child for whom he is responsible, out of moneys provided by Parliament. It also provides for the payment of family allowances to cease. Clause 2 defines a child as a person under 16 or a person between 16 and 19 who is undergoing full-time education, with provision in Clause 4(1) for such groups to be excluded from this definition as may be appropriate.
Clause 3 together with Clause 4(2) defines who is the person who is to be treated as responsible for a child. Unlike family allowances where priority is given to the parent, priority of title to child benefit will belong to the person with whom the child is living, and where a child is living with both his parents the mother will have priority.
Clause 5 provides that child benefit shall be payable at such weekly rate as may be prescribed. It is our intention to introduce child benefit, in the simplest form, at a flat rate, but Clause 5 allows for different rates to be prescribed in relation to different cases—for instance, by reference to the age of a child. We shall have the operational capacity to do such variations if desired when our new computer equipment becomes available a couple of years after the start of the scheme.
The next batch of Clauses — Clauses 6 to 12—provides the administrative framework

for child benefit, much of which is common form to social security benefits in general. The national insurance adjudication system is to be applied with insurance officers, local tribunals and national insurance commissioners. The clauses deal with arrangements for recovery of over-payments, provision of information, details of offences under the Act and provision whereby benefit is made inalienable.
One provision to which I should draw the attention of the House is Clause 10, which permits the Revenue to disclose information necessary to the running of the scheme to officials of my Department, subject, of course, to proper safeguards. As the House will appreciate, the close liaison between the two Departments needed for the child benefit scheme makes such disclosure essential.
Clauses 13 to 15 cover the residence requirement and reciprocal agreements with Northern Ireland and other countries. The effect of the residence conditions will be that child benefit will be paid not later than six months after a person enters this country. This is a more generous rule in many respects than that for family allowances. Whilst the Bill does not extend to Northern Ireland, it is intended that a similar measure will be introduced in respect of Northern Ireland by Order in Council under the Northern Ireland Act 1974.
Part II of the Bill in Clauses 16 to 18 deals with three important items. I think I should draw the attention of the House first to Clause 16, which provides for the interim benefit and its administration. It will have the same effect for most one-parent families as if a family allowance were payable for the only, elder or eldest child in such a family. The benefit is to be taken fully into account for supplementary benefit purposes and is to be paid at the same rate as that running for family allowance at the time it is introduced, which, as I have said, will be April 1976. It will also be subject to income tax and to clawback on 50p of the total sum in the same way as family allowance now is. This will be provided for in the Finance Bill.

Sir George Young: I apologise for interrupting the right hon. Lady. Do I understand that the first interim benefit will be taxable whereas


the child benefit scheme as a whole, when it is introduced, will be tax free?

Mrs. Castle: Yes, the interim benefit is an extension of the family allowance to the first child. Therefore, it is being treated as the family allowance is being treated for tax purposes.
As I was saying, the tax arrangements will be provided for in the Finance Bill. I realise that there may be a number of points of detail which hon. Members might like to raise on the interim benefit. I will leave those matters to be answered by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State.
There are only two points that I emphasise now. First, the benefit is purely a temporary one. We have been bound to go for a simple scheme as the price of doing something quickly. I say that to the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young). To get anything into payment so quickly meant that we could not go in for any kind of elaborations. We had to extend the family allowance in the simplest form possible to the first child of one-parent families. That was the price of doing something quickly for a particular group of one-parent families rather than letting them wait until 1977.
The second point I must make is that the adjudication arrangements for the interim benefit, although different from those of the child benefit for reasons we can no doubt discuss in Committee, have been approved by the Council on Tribunals.
Clause 17 makes provision whereby benefits and increases of benefits in respect of children under the Social Security Act 1975 may be reduced to take account of the introduction of child benefit and of any subsequent increases in the rate of child benefit. This continues the long-standing practice whereby dependency benefits paid, for instance, with sickness, unemployment and invalidity benefit are set at a rate which takes account of family allowance, so that together the payments provide a uniform level of income for each child.
Finally, I come to Clause 18, which, by repealing paragraph 2 of Schedule 2 to the Supplementary Benefit Act 1966, abolishes the wage-stop. Unemployed claimants and others who are temporarily

out of employment will no longer have their benefit restricted to the level of their net weekly earnings when working full-time in their normal occupation.
Financially this is a modest step, affecting only a small number of families, but it removes an injustice which currently deprives these hard-hit families of an average of £2 a week of their income and, incidentally, causes an inordinate amount of irritatingly complex work to those of my staff who have to administer it. Since the peak of November 1970 the number of wage-stopped claimants has dropped from 35,000 to about 5,000 at present, and it seems to us intolerable to continue it. It is, of course, the substantial improvements we have made in the FIS prescribed amounts and in the needs allowances for rent and rates rebates, which have unlocked the door to this reform. Here I pay a special tribute to the Child Poverty Action Group, which has campaigned for the abolition of wage-stop for the best part of a decade. Certainly the staff in my local offices welcome this step as much as CPAG.
The remainder of the Bill covers the transitional and financial provisions. On the latter, of course, until a rate of child benefit is settled, it is not possible for us to give any figure of benefit costs. The administrative costs, once the scheme is under way, will be £10·5 million more than the present family allowance scheme, largely because of higher Post Office charges. As for the two minor items, interim benefit is expected to cost about £21 million, together with a £1·5 million administrative charge. We are extending the hand of help to one-parent families, which is not to be despised. The cost of abolishing the wage-stop is unlikely to exceed £100,000 in a full year. That is the Bill that I commend to the House.
I can best sum up its significance in the terms used by the Child Poverty Action Group in a statement circulated by the group to Members for this debate. The group says:
The Child Poverty Action Group welcomes the introduction of the Child Benefit Bill. This Bill, when fully in force, will be the most important change since 1946 in provisions within the social security system for the main tenance of children. The group has for a long time argued that adequate benefits for all children paid without means tests are a crucial first step towards the abolition of family


poverty and the Bill provides the machinery for this.
Of course, the group has a number of details which it would like to see altered in the Bill. That is to be expected, and we can argue them out in Committee. I think that. I can explain away a number of misunderstandings that the CPAG seems to be harbouring about certain items. For instance, I repeat that it is impossible to introduce the scheme by April 1976 as the CPAG demands.
The German experience it quotes is not relevant to the procedures and practices of this country. I can say that with authority because I made a special trip to West Germany to examine for myself at first hand their machinery for introducing a family allowance scheme for the first child and to compare it with what was possible in this country. I found that the practices were entirely different. The main point is that we have established in the Bill new principles of social provision and the machinery to operate them as quickly as possible. As the CPAG says:
It is the most important change since 1946 in our system of family support.
Once again, it is a Labour Government who are introducing it.

7.59 p.m.

Mr. Norman Fowler: Although the right hon. Lady makes it somewhat difficult by adopting her party political approach to the earlier part of her speech, let me say first that we welcome the Bill.
I think that Members in all parties will agree that the House has a special responsibility when dealing with the interests of children. That is a point which was made some years ago in the House by a speaker who said:
Let us make relief in cases where there are a number of children a matter of right and a matter of honour.
Those were the words of William Pitt in 1796. They were wise words, although it is fair to say that the country had to wait for a further 150 years and the Beveridge Report before children's allowances, now called family allowances, were introduced. It has taken a further 30 years to see that allowance extended to the first child. The reforms in the Bill are valuable. I only hope that the right hon. Lady will concede that there has been considerable all-party pressure about

this and will not claim too much for herself.
I shall give just one example. I may be wrong, but the interim benefit proposed in the Bill—£1·50 for the head of a one-parent family in the case of the first child—seems to bear a remarkable resemblance to a new clause proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams), who has done outstanding service in this area, on the Social Security Benefits Bill. In January my hon. Friend proposed the same amount and that the same new group should be given that entitlement. I think that there was one slight difference. On that occasion virtually the whole of the Labour Party—275 Members in all—obediently trotted through the Lobby led by none other than the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle), and voted it down. Yet it is that clause that the Government are now introducing in the Bill. It is possible to make snide remarks about Old Testament prophets without beards, but someone, it seems, has done a remarkable conversion job on the Government.

Mrs. Castle: I would point out that the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friend has benefited enormously from the unfortunate practice of Press leaks.

Mr. Fowler: I do not know whether my hon. Friend understands that intervention. I certainly do not.
It is also right to recall, Mr. Speaker, that the Conservative Government's Green Paper on the tax credit scheme included a proposal for child credits. After discussion, it was agreed that the child credit should be paid in cash to mothers in the same way as the child benefits in this Bill. Therefore, we obviously welcome the fact that the Government have accepted at least this part of the tax credit scheme. We sincerely hope that they will accept the rest of the scheme. I shall come back to that point later.
Perhaps we should also take into account one other benefit at this stage. In this debate we are basically talking about family poverty and how best we can bring help and support. In 1970 the Conservative Government introduced the Family Income Supplement Scheme as a first step to tackling the problem


of family poverty. It was intended as a first step and would eventually have been replaced by the tax credit scheme. It was an honest attempt to help those most in need. I hope that in replying to the debate the Minister will take the opportunity of at least confirming its value. I think that the right hon. Lady would concede that in opposition her supporters were less than kind about the scheme. In government, however, they have not only retained the scheme but they have increased it once and on Thursday they will seek to increase it again.
But there is still one curious aspect about the Government's policy. Although they retain the scheme, they seem to spend less and less on advertising it and letting the public know of the help which is available. Yet, as Margaret Bramall said on BBC radio this morning and as Frank Field has pointed out on a number of occasions, many people do not know of its existence. If the Government's aim is to use the Family Income Supplement Scheme, they should seek new ways of making it known.
The context of the Bill, Mr. Speaker—I am sorry; Mr. Deputy Speaker—is family poverty. I do not think that any one of the few hon. Members in the House at the moment would question that the position of the poor in Britain is fast becoming critical. We are used to talking about inflation eroding people's standard of living. With the very low paid, there is not much to erode before the situation within the family becomes acute. Unemployment looms as a real threat, and the Chancellor now threatens to cut back further the social services. But let him not think for a moment that his policies, or lack of policies, are not already having an effect on the very people whom the social services are intended to help.
If the Chancellor does not believe me, let him look at the memorandum prepared by the Child Poverty Action Group, which the right hon. Lady has quoted in some respects, entitled "Reducing the Poor's Living Standards at a Stroke". I think that that phrase will be familiar to the right hon. Lady. The point made by the Child Poverty Action Group is that the Labour Government are reducing the standard of living of the poor in Britain.
On Second Reading of the Social Security Pensions Bill I said that unless this Government controlled inflation, Bills like the Child Benefit Bill would be worth very little indeed. Inflation affects everyone in this country, but it perhaps strikes hardest at those who are already living in poverty, in slum housing and in need.
We make that point from this side of the House because we do not want to see the Bill defeated by inflation and we recognise that if the economic situation deteriorates further it will be the children who suffer most, just as at present it is the children who are put at risk by poverty. Mr. Speaker, the problem of poverty and how it affects children—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Myer Galpern): Order. I am sorry for intervening. I appreciate the hon. Member's elevation of my status, but, as he will see, I am not wearing a wig. The hon. Member once corrected himself, but it is rather embarrassing to be referred to as somebody whom one is not. In case the hon. Member does not understand, may I say that he has several times referred to me as Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Fowler: I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I full understood the point you were making.
The problem itself is well known and I should like to draw attention to two aspects of it. First, I draw attention to a valuable work carried out, with the help of the right hon. Lady's Department, by Dr. Harriet Wilson called "Parenting in Poverty". In that work she examined the experience of a sample of children in a Midlands city, and at every stage she found difficulties for the poor parent and the children.
With the four-year-olds the task of mothering had been delegated in many large families. An older sister was made responsible for one of the younger children, and as the four-year-olds shared bedrooms and beds with elder sisters the delegation became fairly complete. As regards the elder children, the survey showed that two-thirds of the families never took their children out. Family holidays were virtually unknown, and there were very few shared activities between parents and children.
Many of the mothers had histories of mental trouble, including suicide attempts. Dr. Wilson observes:
In the milieu of poverty all the families suffer from bad diet, lack of sleep, polluted air and untreated conditions of ill-health".
Extra financial help will not cure all these problems overnight, but it will help, as it will help also in the case of the one-parent family. The Finer Report has comprehensively set out the problems in this respect, and again it is financial problems which are acute.
We have the evidence of a survey carried out by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys—Families in Need. The study consisted of separate surveys of five different local authority areas. In each area one finding was consistent—that the income of fatherless families was less than half the income of two-parent families. If we believe in channelling help to those who need it, here without doubt is a group who actually need it.
Having welcomed the Bill in general terms, I should like to turn to six areas on which we have questions to which I should like the Minister, in summing up, to turn his attention. Some of these questions have already been touched on by the right hon. Lady in her opening remarks.
First, there is the question of the timing of the child benefit. The right hon. Lady will know—she has made it clear—the concern outside this House on this question. The Labour Party committed itself to child benefits in the election of February 1974 and again in the election of October 1974. The assumption was that this benefit would become payable in April 1976. Indeed that was the message which the right hon. Lady, certainly by implication, gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington when she wrote to him last August. She said then that the scheme could not start before April 1976. She added for good measure
that few laymen seem able to comprehend the scale and complexity of the operations involved.
I shall give her the credit and take it that those words were drafted for her by civil servants, because they certainly bear the hallmark of the slightly patronising view of bureaucracy.
What laymen and, indeed, laywomen are able to comprehend is that the Department

of Health and Social Security has quite a habit of making administrative excuses for delay in implementing policy. They can also comprehend—we shall want to go into this a little more closely than the right hon. Lady did in the final seconds of her speech—when they look across the Channel to other countries that other countries seem to be able to manage their administrative problems a little more successfully.
The Secretary of State mentioned Germany. It is true that Germany managed to introduce this sort of scheme in six months. Laymen are also able to comprehend that Britain is the last major European country to introduce this sort of scheme for the first child. Indeed, our position as compared with that of Europe was never put better than by the adviser to the right hon. Lady, Professor Brian Abel Smith, when he addressed a recent conference. He observed:
Basic flat rate pensions are higher in the Netherlands than in Britain … most European countries have better provision for invalidity … and France has better provision for mothers and children.
Those are wise words.
Given that the right hon. Lady has certain hang-ups about her Government's policy on the Common Market, I should have thought that her aim should be to catch up as soon as possible. We find, however, that the right hon. Lady is caught with her feet stuck firmly in high alumina cement. That is, after all, the Department's latest explanation, which we shall want to examine and probe more deeply in Committee.
The second question on which I should like to touch—in fairness to the right hon. Lady, I must say that she has answered most of the points about this—concerns the financial details of the scheme. The right hon. Lady will appreciate that there is little in the Bill which helps us to understand how big the benefit will be or how much it will cost. She has given illustrative material regarding the cost in terms of public expenditure, and we are grateful for that. On the benefit itself, I think I understood her correctly in saying and confirming that it will be tax-free and, therefore, that the child benefit, as opposed to the interim benefit, will avoid the poverty trap. That being the case, it is something we shall welcome.
The third point is how the new benefit or the interim benefit helps the very poorest who are dependent on supplementary benefit. Will not the effect be that although they will get the new benefit they will also lose their entitlement to supplementary benefit by the same amount? In other words, they will certainly get the benefit as of right, but financially they will not be better off. If that is the case, and if the Government confirm it, have they contemplated some extra arrangement on disregards?
Fourthly, there is a matter on which the right hon. Lady did not touch, namely, the position of widowed mothers. The Chancellor has made it clear that the widowed mother will not get the interim benefit. That is because the widowed mother's allowance already includes an allowance for herself and her children. Are we to assume from that that the widowed mother also will not gain from the child benefit itself?
My fifth point is more in the nature of a suggestion than a question. One obvious effect of the introduction of this scheme is that the take-home pay of the father will reduce, because it is implicit in the scheme that as the mother receives the new benefit so the father loses his child tax allowance. Clearly there is a danger here that the reduction in the take-home pay could—I put it no higher—trigger off a new round of wage demands.
Therefore, will the Government at least consider examining the feasibility of showing on the father's pay slip the amount that is being paid to the mother, the aim obviously being to give him a picture of family income and to show that the family is better rather than worse off?
My sixth and last point concerns research into the workings of the scheme. When Beveridge reported he came out against the payment of any allowances for the first child because he took the view that everyone should be able to support one child without help. Later experience has shown that it is the first children who are more expensive and for whom the need often shows most acutely. I mentioned that to make this point. It has always seemed to me quite extraordinary how much money we are

prepared as a nation to spend not only with an imperfect idea of what we are doing but with only the haziest idea at times of what effect the money that we are spending so freely is having. That comment applies not only to the DHSS but to many other Government Departments concerned in the home and social spheres.
If we are to use resources most effectively, the Bill should be accompanied by continuous research into, for example, its effect on one-parent families.
There are other points in the Bill—for example, the question of the wage-stop. My hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) will deal with this more fully when he speaks. Doubtless we shall want to examine it in Committee, although I certainly take the point made by the right hon. Lady about the few people it affects and the small expenditure involved.
However, I should like to make one major point. There is general agreement in this House that it should be our aim to provide more help for poorer families. There is general agreement that we want this help to go as of right and without all of the problems of take-up. There is also general agreement, I assume that the Bill deals with only one part of the problem of poorer families. It is an important part. It is a vital part but it still leaves, for example, the 2 million pensioners at present living in retirement who are dependent upon supplementary benefit.
There is general agreement on all sides of the House on this matter. Can we not agree, therefore, on a path forward? In particular, can we not now agree that the tax credit scheme, of which the Child Benefit Bill is only a part, provides such a path? Clearly the Conservative Party is committed to the tax credit scheme. In saying that, I do not seek to establish that it is the idea of only one party or that it has the support of only my party. It has the support of the Liberal Party. It has the support of some in the right hon. Lady's party. It had the blessing of the late Richard Crossman and the support of the former Douglas Houghton, then Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party. What is perhaps most telling of all for the right hon. Lady, is that it has the support of


her own special adviser, Professor Brian Abel Smith, who has called it
The largest single step forward in nearly universal provision for the poor and for social dependants since the post-war developments stemming from the Beveridge Report.
The reason for that support is clear. It provides benefit as of right and directs it to those who need it. It does something further which is urgently required: it brings into the system a simplicity which is so urgently needed at this stage. At present there are about 44 different means-tested benefits in operation, plus other benefits which are not means-tested. The system is becoming a jungle of regulations requiring a detailed map for the claimant. Some master the jungle and get the help they need, but others do not. That cannot be a satisfactory situation in the view of any hon. Member.

Mrs. Castle: This is a serious point. One of the reasons why some of us who were members of the Select Committee came out against the tax credit scheme was that even in the expensive form in which it was proposed at that time it did not begin to get rid of those 44 means tests. Effectively it got rid of only one of them.

Mr. Fowler: The right hon. Lady is being less than frank about what the effects of the tax credit scheme would be. What I am really saying to her is this. We are not urging her to implement the whole tax credit scheme immediately. She is right on that matter. That has not been our position. In present circumstances it would be absurd. We say, however, that it would be a tremendous advance if she announced her agreement in principle with a scheme which would make a substantial contribution to eliminating poverty, because that surely is what the tax credit plan is. It is a comprehensive anti-poverty programme.
A few weeks ago the right hon. Lady came to the House with the Social Security Pensions Bill. Many of my hon. Friends who are present today were present on that occasion. We made it clear that we did not want pensions to become a party political football. We had amendments to the Bill to make, and they are being made in Committee. But we wanted to reach an agreed basis upon which to build.
I suggest to the right hon. Lady that here is a similar test for herself. She may not accept the tax credit system in all its details. She may want to change it. Very well—no one pretends that it is the last word. But let her at least announce her agreement in principle to it, so that we can all work, men and women in all parties, to eliminate poverty in this country.

8.22 p.m.

Mrs. Helene Hayman: It is a great pleasure to be able to support in the House a new non-means-tested social security benefit. It is a long time since the House has seen the introduction of such a benefit. Credit should be paid to the work that has been done in its introduction.
I was delighted to hear the stream of invective against the bureaucracy, the uncertainty and the inefficiency of means-tested benefits that came from the Opposition Front Bench. I hope that in future the House will be united on this issue and that we shall no longer see the introduction of benefits of that very unuseful kind.
I was very taken with the idea of the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler) that husbands should be informed of what their wives were getting in family allowances. That is absolutely right in these days of equality, and I completely agree with him. But I hoped that he would make it clear that he supports the corollary—that when any wife picks up her family allowances she should be told what her husband is earning. It is, after all, slightly more than the family allowances.
Coming to the Bill, I welcome heartily the precision that has been slipped into Clause 18—if I may put it thus—dealing with the abolition of the wage-stop. Many of us have felt very strongly about this for a long time. It has caused great and unnecessary hardship to many poor families. We are very glad to see the end of it. I can only say to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that I wish that she had slipped in two abolitions in the Bill and that we could have seen the abolition of the cohabitation rule at the same time. Had those two rules gone we could all have been happier with the resultant workings of the Supplementary Benefits Commission.
The Bill's main provisions—the introduction of family allowance for the first child and the phasing out of tax allowances—are a very significant departure from a philosophy that has dogged us for years in fighting for increases in family allowances and for allowances for the first child. These provisions are a recognition that economic circumstances have changed drastically since the days of Beveridge, and that the assumption on which the whole family allowances scheme was built, that a husband's earnings would support himself, a wife and one child, is absolutely a part of the history books. It is no longer a part of the economic reality for families in Britain.
As has been pointed out, very often it is the birth of the first child that is the crisis point in economic terms for many young families. Until the birth of that child the pattern in most families is for there to be two wage earners, two wages coming in and two mouths to feed. It is with the birth of the first child that suddenly there is only one wage coming into the family and three mouths to feed, and no help coming from the social security system. Therefore, the introduction of a benefit for the first child is an enormous step forward.
I should not have thought, however, that it was such an enormous step forward, because it seems a very logical thing to do. However, knowing of the fight that people in this House have had about introducing it, I see it as an enormous step.
Of course, I am disappointed at the timing of the introduction. My right hon. Friend will not think that she has a critic on the benches behind her if I voice that disappointment. It is only right that when a measure of this sort is introduced, those of us who care and who welcome it should also say where we think it is deficient and where it should go further, and we should be prepared to fight for it to go further. We must be disappointed at the date of the introduction.
I recognise the serious and very practical difficulties that face the Department in this respect. However, one looks at the experience of other countries. Furthermore, what always comes to my mind is the speed and efficiency of identification that we managed when petrol rationing

was in everyone's mind and the speed with which the different coupons for all the cars were distributed. Cars were identified and their owners were identified, and the coupons were issued through post offices. It is not only a matter of resources, not only a matter of staff, not only a matter of buildings; it is also a matter of political will, and it is the political will nationally, it is the political will of this House, apart from the handful of hon. Members who are here tonight, that it is necessary to mobilise if we are to see the benefit brought in earlier, as I hope we shall.
Turning to Clause 5, may I say how glad I was to hear the Secretary of State refer to the possibility of grading the new child benefit according to age. It could be a most significant step, when we are introducing a new benefit, when we are completely revamping the scheme of family support, to look at the problems that relate to different ages of children. Of course it is enormously difficult to do, and with the present administrative machine I would think almost impossible, but there is no reason why, when we have the proper computer facilities, we should not be able to grade allowances according to age. Everyone who has ever thought about it for a minute knows that it is much cheaper to feed and clothe an 18-month-old baby than it is to feed and clothe a 15-year-old teenager. It is necessary that we make this sort of distinction and that we recognise that arbitrary lines will have to be drawn here and age distinctions made, but it will be invaluable and make a much more sensitive benefit if we are able to age-grade it.
The interim benefit for one-parent families must be welcomed by all of us who have worked for this group and in this field—welcomed not only for the practical help that it will give to the one-parent families involved but also for the recognition that it gives to the special needs of that group. I often feel that lone parents and their children suffer not only the practical problems—and God knows they suffer those—of poverty, bad housing and lack of day care and resources, but also from being ignored or brushed under the carpet or not being seen as a group that deserve support for the job they are doing in bringing up their children single-handed. That is


why, although I have argued before about the specific measures which the Chancellor introduced, I think it was a tremendous boost for lone parents and their children when he singled them out as the group most in need.
But I am concerned at the lack of help that this interim benefit will bring for the 250,000 lone parents and their children who are depending on supplementary benefit. Although they will pick up their child benefit at the post office, they will lose it when they go round to the DHSS; it will be knocked off their supplementary benefit. I think that we must look again at whether this particular benefit—and it is an interim benefit, it is an emergency aid, it is only a one-year scheme—could be discounted for the purpose of assessing supplementary benefit.
I know all the problems which are entailed when one starts doing this with a non-means-tested benefit and when one starts bringing more people into eligibility for supplementary benefit. But there are two arguments. One is that we are dealing with a unique situation, an interim, a stop-gap measure. The other, of course, is that many of us would like to see the real solution to the financial problems of one-parent families in a non-means-tested benefit as of right for them quite separate from supplementary benefit. We know that supplementary benefit is inadequate. It is a wrongly-devised system to cope with the long-term needs of families in poverty. It is designed to give emergency, short-term help. It should not be the system whereby we support parents and children over years—and that is the reality for many one-parent families in this country.
Finally, we shall have to fight both on the size of this benefit and on its timing. We shall have to fight very hard. I should like to see written into the Bill regular upgradings of family allowances or benefits. That is the voice of not long but bitter experience of having to fight each time round when we wanted a rise in family allowances, against the fears that are always expressed from all quarters that it will be unpopular, that it will not be on, that it will have to be argued out with the Treasury. Rightly, we do not have this sort of argument over pensions. We should not have such arguments over child benefit either. It

should be written into the statute that this benefit will be regularly reviewed and regularly upgraded, and with the current situation I do not think once a year is sufficiently regular.
Ultimately this House, the Government and we as a society will be judged on our treatment of children and on the attack we make on family poverty. We shall be judged not on the number of tears shed when the occasional terrible tragedy occurs but on the action we take in the less glamorous, less dramatic field: the unpopular, unfashionable worlds of prevention. We shall be judged not on the tears shed after the event, tragic and terrible, but on the money that is spent on support—not only direct financial support but social work and nursery support and support in terms of good housing and adequate facilities.
We shall be judged after the event not by how many of us gather to shed our tears and beat our breasts but on the amount of money that even at a time of national crisis, when we are doing all we can to cut down public expenditure, we are willing to give to protect those most vulnerable in our society.

8.37 p.m.

Sir George Young: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Welwyn and Hatfield (Mrs. Hayman) who I believe was absent from the Division Lobby at 6.25 p.m. on 29th January when the House divided on a new clause which my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams) sought to introduce into the Social Security Benefits Bill. It was hard to believe, listening to the Secretary of State, who I am sorry to see is leaving the Chamber, that she is a leading member of a party that marched shoulder to shoulder through the Division Lobby that evening to obstruct something which has been welcomed so warmly by her this evening.
On that occasion in January my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington moved new Clause 2, which would have given an allowance of £1·50 to the eldest child of one-parent families. Only a few weeks ago the Under-Secretary told us that the Government could not entertain such a measure. That was, he said, because of
major computing programme difficulties, major printing programmes, housing difficulties


and staffing problems."—[Official Report, 29th Jan., 1975; Vol. 885, c. 457.]
All of those problems have miraculously been erased in a few weeks. I wonder whether the reason for delaying the announcement on this proposal is simply that the new clause introduced in January was introduced by a Conservative Member.
We must contrast the 275 Members who trooped through the Lobby against the new clause that evening with the three or perhaps five Labour Members present tonight. The right hon. Lady was pushing her luck a little when she criticised the previous Conservative administration for their delay in dealing with family allowances. It is true that in three years and eight months the previous Conservative Government did not review family allowances. But it will be three years and two months before the Labour Government honour the commitment which they gave in last February's election. There is not a lot of difference between those intervals.
The amount of the new benefit has tantalisingly been omitted from the Bill, which makes it impossible to assess its impact on family poverty and other related problems. The right hon. Lady said in her Departmental Press release issued on 28th April:
The Government aim in the Child Benefit Bill is to improve and simplify the system of family benefits by combining existing family allowances with income tax child allowances.
I assume that by the word "improve" the right hon. Lady means that she hopes to increase the amount of support going to families.
An examination of Command 5879 "Public Expenditure to 1978–79" shows that the money is not there. Page 112 says:
The figures in Table 2:12 and elsewhere in this White Paper do not allow for the cost of a child benefit scheme for all children, including the first in each family, to which the Government is committed … Additional expenditure on this scheme would be a charge on the contingency reserve.
The contingency reserve has been overspent many times by the Government since then. Also, it has become quite clear from the statements which the Chancellor has made in his Budget and

subsequently that many of the schemes in the White Paper cannot now be implemented because of the need to cut back on public expenditure.
I suspect that this Bill will not increase the amount of Government assistance going to families with children. It will redistribute it from the husband to the wife. This will be a continuation of the practice that the Chancellor has currently adopted, because he has paid for the increase in family allowance this year by reducing the real value of the child tax allowance.
The failure to increase child tax allowances nullifies the benefit of the family allowance increase for families both above and below the tax threshold, as shown quite clearly in an article in New Society on 24th April 1975, so that, far from being a new deal for families, it will take money out of the husband's pocket on the Friday and put it into the wife's purse on the following Tuesday. Far from being a child benefit scheme, it looks like being a father dis-benefit scheme. It is up to ladies to educate their husbands to be more generous with the housekeeping, rather than to rely on the Government forcibly to take the money away from their husbands on the Friday in order to give it back to them on the Tuesday. There should be a more enlightened way of achieving these aims in International Womens' Year.
It is because the financial restriction placed by the Treasury on the DHSS are so strict that there is a total absence of any inflation-proofing in this Bill. The right hon. Lady quite clearly attaches great importance to the concept of inflation-proofing in the fight against poverty, because in the Second Reading of the Social Security Pensions Bill on 18th March this year she said:
I need hardly stress the importance to pensioners of having these firm guarantees of full protection against inflation. In the original White Paper I described that protection as 'one of the most precious assets of the new scheme.'"—[Official Report, 18th March 1975; Vol. 888, c. 1491.]
She went on to criticise the then provisions for the graduated pension scheme, which were not inflation proofed, by saying that they would be left to shrink in value year by year until effectively they disappeared.
If that is her view on inflation-proofing, why is there no clause in the Bill obliging the Government to review the level of benefits regularly? It is a clause which we have in the Social Security Benefits Bill and in the Social Security Pensions Bill, which is in Committee at the moment, but which is totally absent from this Bill.
I see some major problems arising from merging the present tax reliefs with the present family allowances into the new child benefit. I do not think that the Government appreciate that the criteria for eligibility for family allowances are quite different from the criteria for eligibility for tax relief. In general, eligibility for tax relief is much more broadly drawn than eligibility for family allowances, and I am very disturbed to see the much tighter rules for family allowances being reproduced in the Child Benefit Bill, and in some cases made more restrictive, whereas many of us would rather see the much broader rules that guide the tax requirements. This effectively means that many of the benefits currently accruing to families through the tax allowances will be lost.
I can best illustrate this by reference to the family allowance book. I have managed to borrow it from my wife with great difficulty for the purpose of this debate. May I say to the Under-Secretary that these booklets for a family of four children will shortly be worth £300 each. Perhaps there ought to be second thoughts about security.
Reading through the conditions at the back of this very valuable booklet, one sees that each order must be cashed within six months, and that failure to do so may result in the loss of rights to the money. There is no such restriction on the tax allowances. On the death of the child, the family allowance book must be returned at once. Tax relief, however, extends for a full year even if the child dies on 6th April.
There is also reference to the difference in the treatment of children over 16. With family allowances, the moment a child stops attending school, college or university, the book must be returned. Tax relief, on the other hand, extends for the full year, even if a child over 16 ceases attending school during the year. Family allowances are not payable

if a child goes to live with someone else with a view to adoption, whereas tax allowances are payable until the child is legally adopted by another family. Family allowances are not payable if a child leaves home, apart from prescribed conditions, but the tax allowances continue to be paid even when a child makes prolonged visits to friends or relatives.
Finally, tax allowances are available for a step child or a child legally adopted who goes into hospital. But where a child is not a natural child, all the family allowances cease after four weeks.
I suspect that there are other discrepancies which can be dealt with best in Committee. But the criteria are different. The Government have adopted tighter criteria with regard to family allowances in their Bill.
Turning to the Bill, we see that some of the conditions are even tighter. It appears, for example, from Clause 2 and Schedule 1 that apprentices in full-time training are to be excluded, although currently they are eligible both for family allowances and for tax allowances.
In Clause 3, the person responsible for a child is defined. It appears that this responsibility has been drawn more tightly than for family allowances. In paragraph 4, it also appears that provision is being made for disqualifying natural children in hospital, although no such provision exists for family allowances. It appears from Clause 7 that child benefits will cease if a child is removed from one's own control by a local authority or otherwise, whereas in some conditions I believe that tax allowances would continue. It is also clear from the Bill that a new child will generate child benefit only from the date from when he is born, whereas tax allowance is available for the whole year.
There are one or two matters in the Bill which do not seem to me to be clear. If a child over 16 years of age earns more than a prescribed amount, the parent forfeits family allowance. The same is true of the tax allowance. If a child earns or has income above a certain amount, there is a £1 for £1 deduction from the parent's benefit. I cannot find anything in the Bill dealing with the earnings of children and how they are treated in assessing the


entitlement of parents. Nor is it clear whether the tax allowances which are to be phased out are simply the child allowance, or whether it is also proposed to phase out the additional personal allowance for children which is available to parents living on their own or to married men with totally incapacitated wives.
On a more positive note, I welcome the provision to graduate benefit according to age. The expenses which parents incur in connection with their children vary as the children grow up. The present system of family allowances does not reflect the increase in expenditure. Looking at the present tax allowances, there are three rates—one for children under 11, one for the 11 to 16 year-olds and one for the over-16s. That graduation is rather coarse and does not reflect the increase in expenditure incurred when children, for example, start attending school at the age of five, bearing in mind that they grow rapidly between the ages of five and 11. I hope that the Government will be able to do some research on this subject before introducing the change. I shall be happy to supply any information of my own to assist this.
The abolition of the wage-stop has already been referred to by other hon. Members. If the salaries of Members of Parliament remain frozen and the level of benefits goes on increasing, it may be that hon. Members who lose their seats will benefit from the abolition of the wage-stop.
I want now to refer to what I believe to be an anomaly in Schedule 1(3). It is a small point, but it is one which causes annoyance. It relates to married children, and it says:
Except where regulations otherwise provide, no person shall be entitled to child benefit in respect of a child who is married.
If a daughter gets married, her father is no longer entitled to family allowance for her. On the other hand, if she marries a student and is attending university, her father is expected to maintain her even though she is married. There is a difference of approach between the DHSS and the DES on how parents are meant to look after children after they have married.
As for the position of the disregards, if this new interim benefit is to be taxable and to be disregarded for supplementary

benefit purposes, the number of one-parent families who will benefit will be very small.
I hope that the Minister can give us some information on one-parent families for which we have been pressing him for some time—namely, when the new disregard limits will be introduced which were passed by the House some months ago. The actual date of implementation is left to his Department, which has been silent on the subject for a number of months.
We have a long way to go. This booklet, "Social Security in the European Community", published by Chatham House and PEP, makes it clear that this country lags far behind other European countries. On page 23, it says:
The only continental country with a record of parsimony towards the family to rival that of Britain has been Germany, but this has now changed.
Some very telling tables in that publication show how stingy we are.
The Bill may indeed be a milestone, but it is a milestone on which the distance has not yet been inscribed. Until the figures are added, the traveller on this important journey is not much the wiser for seeing it.

8.51 p.m.

Sir Brandon Rhys Williams: This Bill is an attempt by the Secretary of State to fill the vacuum left behind after her hasty and partisan decision to halt work on the previous Government's tax credit scheme. It is to be welcomed, because at last we have a measure to implement the suggestion made certainly as long ago as 1940 by Lord Keynes in a pamphlet on "How to Pay for the War". For all I know it may have been made many times before that. It seems rather a pity that it should have taken the responsible authorities 35 years to bring forward such an obvious administrative reform.
There are many questions that one has to ask as to the Secretary of State's policy. After listening to what she said about the tax credit scheme, and recognising that she served on the Select Committee, I do not think that she can ever have understood it. She certainly never understood its possibilities or the attractions that it could have for her party, with its dedication to social reform, or,


indeed, to anyone interested in administrative reform. One has to ask why the Government are concentrating on the child benefit and forgetting, for instance, the reform of the systems for assistance to the blind and for dependent relatives, who surely also have a claim.
If we are to discuss the Bill intelligently, we need to know the rate of benefit that the Government have in mind. We know that in comparable democracies, in Belgium, France and Germany for instance, the rates are infinitely more generous and we have a lot of catching up to do. But from a hint within the Bill—namely, that when the benefit is introduced it will not be sufficient to justify ending the tax allowances in their higher ranges, that is to say for the older children—it seems unlikely to constitute a lavish social wage. At a time when we are contemplating increases of £5, £8 or £10 a week for industrial workers already earning far above the national average wage, to discuss whether a child's benefit should be £1:50 or £2 a week shows a total lack of compassion and comprehension.
This inevitably brings one to the question of the cost. I have some points to raise which I might not be able to elaborate in Committee for fear of being called to order. The first is the question of whether redistribution of income is the same as other branches of Government expenditure. I have in my time tried to get the Treasury to analyse its owns figures so that one could separate the Government's activities in raising and spending money on their own projects, such as defence, and their activities as an impeller of purchasing power from one part of society to another. The money that is drawn through income tax and national insurance contributions goes back again, for the most part, as money, or as spending power, probably to the very same people in many cases who are making the contributions. Therefore, that element in what appears in official figures as Government expenditure is really only personal expenditure assisted by Government intervention.
There is also another kind of redistribution, which is part of the policy of the Bill, and that is redistribution from husband to wife. I wish we had the data on which to judge the overall effects of

what we are doing by our schemes for social benefit, in particular by family allowances.
If the Government chose to introduce family allowance at a generous rate, comparable with that in France, Germany or Belgium, what would the overall effect be on the national picture? Certainly it would bring about a change in the character of expenditure, but it might not change the total level of expenditure. If the books were balanced the income which the Government would draw through one means or another would obviously match the additional income that would go to the families. But the character of national expenditure would certainly change. There would be less spending by men on such things as men are inclined to spend their money on. I would single out the example of gambling—but perhaps that shows my old-fashioned prejudice. However, there would be an increase in spending on the things that mothers long to spend more money on, such as better food, better clothing for their children and other aspects of family comfort and necessary expenditure. I would welcome such a shift, as I am sure would the vast majority of hon. Members. There would also be a change in the level of take-home pay.
We are dealing with a system which draws money from men, either by cancelling their tax allowances or by changing their overall rate of tax, and hands it to their wives, whose resources are likely to be much smaller. The change in the level of take-home pay may be thought to have side effects in the form of pressure for higher wages and so on. But where incentives are concerned, we need to study the effect on the marginal rate of tax. If family allowances were increased by total cancellation of the child tax allowances, the marginal rate of tax for the average wage earner would probably remain the same. The effect on incentives would be hard to assess.
I would like to deal briefly with the cost of living, compensation for changes in the cost of living brought about through wages, and the threshold systems of one kind or another. There is no doubt that the concept of the social wage features largely in the Government's thinking in the whole context of the changing cost of living, and that family allowances are part of the social wage.
I have often tried to draw attention to the deficiencies of the retail price index. No one can be sure what sort of family is referred to in the index, whether it is a family of a husband, wife and two children or some other combination. This makes it difficult to assess the effects of particular changes in the cost of living on families of different sizes.
However, there is one matter on which we should clarify our minds. The cost of living does not rise by a percentage. We express it in percentage terms, but we should express it in money terms. If a person's expenditure on bread rises because there has been an increase in the price of a loaf, it is unlikely that his increased expenditure will vary substantially whether he is rich or poor. Yet, by expressing the cost of living as a percentage, the suggestion is that the higher-paid are put to the same proportionate additional expense, by a change such as a rise in the price of a loaf, as the lower paid. This is untrue. We should express changes in cost of living as a weekly money sum rather than a percentage. Because we carry on with this obvious sloppy thinking in raising wages to meet rises in the cost of living, in effect we are doing two things. Firstly, we accentuate the differentials between the better-paid and the low-paid, which are probably partly corrected in the tax system but in a blind and random way.
Secondly, we have the effect of transferring spending power from families to single people. More particularly we transfer resources to the two-earner family without dependants. They are the people who gain most from rises in the cost of living which are compensated by across-the-board wage changes.
By pursuing these policies over a period of years, we have produced a situation in which it is urgent to raise family allowances to get families back to a reasonable standard of living and self-respect. As the cost of living increases, we should hasten to raise family allowances as a selective weapon to protect living standards.
Unfortunately, although the right hon. Lady is making the most of the fact that the Government have increased family allowances—and all credit to them

for that—they did not raise them, even at the time of the announcement, by enough to compensate for the changes in the cost of living since the last increase. Since the announcement, the cost of living has been roaring ahead.
That brings me to the next question, which is the administration of the reform. It is disheartening to read in the preface to the Bill that apparently there will be no savings to the Inland Revenue. That presumably means that there will be no savings to employers either, who are carrying the burden of pay-as-you-earn without compensation from the State. Pay-as-you-earn, that ridiculously archaic system, is to go on.
Other hon. Members have asked when the scheme will begin. It is hard to believe that the Government, having, we hope, passed the Bill through Parliament without too much difficulty in the next few weeks, propose then to leave mothers without their benefit until 1977. The ridiculous and unworthy administrative excuses advanced by the right hon. Lady will have to be examined in Committee, where I am sure they will be seen to be inadequate. I do not like to make partisan accusations against honourable colleagues in the House, but the right hon. Lady invites it by her manner. One must ask whether at the back of her mind is the thought that 1977 may be an election year.
Then the question arises, from the administrative point of view, why not introduce the family allowance on a graduated scale right away? If we are waiting for a computer to handle this scheme, why cannot we programme the computer to introduce graduated family allowances from the start? Then we would be able to sweep away the child tax allowances at once and achieve a worthwhile administrative saving. If the right hon. Lady does not seriously plan to do that, it tells us something very disturbing about the state of the Department's computer programme and possibly about her Department's morale. It also suggests to me that the right hon. Lady has an utter lack of real will to help families in the present emergency.
I should like to comment on one or two other points of significance in the Bill. I am naturally glad that the Government have recanted and changed their attitude


to the one-parent families. I read in New Society a suggestion that this was one of the ways in which we could advance. I thought that it would be useful on the Report stage of the Social Security Benefits Bill to have an opportunity to discuss the matter. I hoped that the Government might make a favourable statement which would enable me to withdraw my new clause; but they made it plain that they did not intend then to implement the suggestion. No doubt pressure and remorse have worked on them and have made them decide that possibly the administrative difficulties are not so great after all. Let us hope that they will decide the same about the date of implementation of the increase for the first child in all families, as they now have for the one-parent families.
One notices the rather chilling reference in the clause dealing with allowances for the one-parent family to the cohabitation rule. I hope that we may have a useful discussion on that in Committee. I hope I may have the honour to be selected to serve on it. I believe that ultimately we shall solve this problem only by introducing householder credits. That will take us a stage further towards the original tax-credit scheme of which the Secretary of State's child endowment is but a pale imitation.
I welcome Clause 10, which refers to the disclosure of information by the Inland Revenue. I do not know how important this provision may prove in the context of the Bill, but it is most important for the one-parent family that information which the Government machine has should be made available to assist mothers who are unable to claim their due allowances when they have been abandoned by their husbands and left without proper resources in charge of families. The Bill proposes a breach in the long-standing principle. I understood long ago the reasons for the principle; but the time has come to set it aside. I welcome the fact that the Bill makes a beginning.
I welcome, too, the abolition of the wage-stop. At least this bugbear is being taken out of our social security system. I was amazed when the Secretary of State said that the cost would be only about £100,000, if I understood her correctly. That figure means that the application

of the wage-stop has already gone out of use, and quite rightly so. Now Parliament will put an end to it once and for all.
I have often drawn attention to the fact that we do not clarify our minds as to the root of entitlement of social security benefit. Do we give money to people because of their need, because of their record of contributions or because of their citizenship? We still have this hopeless muddle in the administration of social security. I can see that I shall have to follow my rule on this matter of making the same speech 100 times—not stopping at 92 or 98—if I am to get anywhere with the point. The fact that I have mentioned it again tonight takes me a little nearer to the 100 mark.
The Bill constitutes a positive step forward to a system of citizenship benefits which will eventually serve of itself—I hope—to eliminate need. Therefore, I know that the House will want to give it a warm welcome.

9.3 p.m.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: I should like warmly to welcome the Bill but I am a little surprised, judging from the attendance in the Chamber, that there is so little enthusiasm for it. I hope that that situation will lead to the Bill quickly reaching the statute book.
The test of how useful the legislation will be is in the level of benefit which will eventually be paid. In many ways this debate is an artificial one because we do not know the level of benefit. I hope that this Bill will not be another example of the way in which the hopes of families living in poverty are raised with the announcement of a benefit by the Government only to be dashed when the actual scale of benefit is revealed. I would hope that when it comes in 1977 the level of benefit will be sufficient to remove the problem of child poverty completely.
It seems sad that it is 10 years since the extent of this problem was first identified, yet before a worthwhile benefit is brought in many of the children who were first identified as being in need will have grown to adults and may well be back into the cycle of deprivation themselves. It is sad that we have had to wait so long. It is unsatisfactory that administrative problems mean that we must wait


until 1976–77 for the introduction of the scheme.
I hope that in sorting out these problems we make certain that the new benefit can be quickly uprated. Nothing upsets people more than to be told that there will be an uprating in, say, six months' time but by the time the increased payment reaches them inflation has eroded a great deal of it. I hope that upratings can be introduced simultaneously with the announcement of increase as happens with VAT increases, for example. I hope, too, that it will be possible for variations according to age to be brought in much more quickly than the couple of years that I understand was the period originally suggested.
I turn to the section dealing with the interim benefit. This is the excuse for delaying the scheme. Interim benefit will be given to one-parent families. The rate will be £1·50, which I believe is one-sixth of the amount suggested in the Finer Report, which was produced over two years ago. As the Government are taking the trouble to identify one-parent families—everyone is aware of the problems involved—it seems to me that the level of benefit for them could be higher than £1·50. Since we suggest that the families in most need should be helped, the rate could be a little more generous.
My hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn and Hatfield (Mrs. Hayman) referred to her pleasure at the disappearance of the wage-stop clause, but was concerned because the cohabitation rule remained. Not only does it remain but it is to be used again in assessing the interim benefit. After all the evidence as to the way in which this rule acts unfairly, it is a shame that a further piece of legislation should rely on that rule to distribute the interim benefit. I hope that the Government will look again at that provision.
A small part deals with children in the care of the local authorities. It is reasonable that no benefit should be paid to parents of children being looked after by a local authority. However, I wonder whether the Department has looked at the question whether that benefit should be paid to foster parents where children have been boarded out by local authorities. Fostering allowances vary widely.

Some authorities are extremely mean. If the child benefit could be paid to the foster parents it would greatly help many foster parents.
Stress has been laid on the problem of the fragmentation of existing benefits. A great deal was heard from the Opposition Front Bench about that matter. The only way to abolish fragmented benefits is to place the level of child benefits high enough. Some fragmented benefits cost a great deal to administer and have extremely low take-up rates. I suggest that the level should be fixed sufficiently high so that many of those benefits can be phased out.
I welcome the Bill. I hope that when it is implemented the level of benefit will be generous so as to remove child poverty once and for all from this country.

9.13 p.m.

Mr. Robert Boscawen: I can understand why the Chamber has been empty throughout the debate. There have been only two Government back-bench speakers. The Bill is a non-event. It does nothing to help poverty now. It offers jam tomorrow.
In an aura of self-justification, the Secretary of State, when she introduced the Bill, endeavoured to show up the Conservative tax credit scheme as expensive and ill-designed to suit the needs of today. Her remarks were the most hypocritical that I have heard for a long time. She has in fact introduced a pinchbeck idea of part of our tax credit scheme.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Alec Jones): Will the hon. Gentleman say how he is in a position to criticise the scheme, since the level of benefit has not yet been fixed?

Mr. Boscawen: That is just the point which we complain about. We know nothing about what the benefit will be. We do not know what it is. Will it be a neutral benefit? Will it mean no more than is being given out at present in family allowances and tax relief? We have had very little explanation.
The Secretary of State said that our tax credit scheme was impossibly expensive, and that was why she objected to it. She later said that her scheme would be potentially expensive. She hedged


around with "ifs" and "buts" as to exactly how it would be paid for. She did herself less than justice and was not on her best form.
Of course we are pleased that the Government are doing, albeit in two years' time, what Parliament has long wanted to do, namely, giving a benefit to the first child. But this is about the most unpropitious moment the right hon. Lady could have chosen to introduce the Bill, in the present disastrous economic climate. I give the Government one crumb of comfort. At the time of the Second Reading debate of the original Family Allowances Bill there was also a grim crisis. The debate took place early in 1945 when some of us thought we were almost with our backs to the wall. Those family allowances have lasted and served the country well for 30 years, although there have been recognised gaps in the system. The major gap was, of course, the absence of a family allowance for the first child.
I have always wondered whether the reason for not giving the family allowance for the first child was Beveridge's philosophy that a man's wages should be enough to support himself, his wife and one child. I have read the original report of the debate carefully and I do not think that was the reason. The reason was that which exists today—that the Treasury was not prepared to find sufficient money.
The Solicitor-General who wound up the debate in March 1945 said that there were 3 million one-child families and 2·6 million families with two children or more. Therefore, there were 5·6 million first children within the 10 million children in the country. He said that, by simple arithmetic, it was clear that it would cost £73 million to pay 5s. a week to the children who were not first children but would cost £130 million to pay it to the first child as well as to the others. That shows the old hand of the Treasury at work. The Government thought that if they cut out the allowance for the first child the cost would be halved.
That allowance for the first child should have been introduced a long time ago, and the reasons for it are even more pressing today. Married couples nearly always both go out to work today before their first child arrives, so that when

the first child comes along the family income drops considerably. That is when the need is greatest.
I turn to the implementation of part of the Finer Report's recommendations, that of introducing family allowances for one-parent families next year. Why did not the Government accept the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams) in Committee on the Social Security Benefits Bill on 29th January? Had they done so, it might have been possible for the allowance to be brought in at the beginning of this month. I do not accept the palaver about the difficulties of identifying the single-parent families.
As the hon. Lady the Member for Welwyn and Hatfield (Mrs. Hayman) said, where there is a political will the problem can be solved. For example, when petrol rationing is introduced the coupons are issued to everybody in a remarkably short time. I believe that if the political will had existed to bring family allowance to lone-parent families at the beginning of April, it could have been done. Indeed, it should have been done.
I am disappointed that we are still lagging very far behind in implementing the main proposal in the Finer Report. I accept that the major proposal for a guaranteed maintenance allowance for those families was means-tested and, therefore, out of tune with the thinking of everyone on both sides of the House, but it was not beyond the ability of the Government to think out a different way of helping single-parent families. Theirs is the greatest need. Theirs is the largest single body of easily identifiable families who are in poverty. That is where the shoe pinches most. By pre-empting the nation's resources in so many other ways, the Government are putting off the day when they can help the lone-parent families.
When the family allowance for the children of lone-parent families comes in next year, it will be seven years since the public fuss and row took place which caused Richard Crossman to take action and to initiate the Finer Report. Of course, the production of the report took too long. The best is often the enemy of the good. In this case the result is such that far too long a time will have


passed before anything has emerged to help these very needy people. Of course, by no means the whole body of the report can be implemented at once.
But this situation shows up clearly the inefficiency of Parliament. I hope that the Government take this to heart and consider again what they can do to replace the guaranteed maintenance allowance that was proposed in the Finer Report. I hope that they will introduce some provision as early as possible.
Lastly, I return to the main theme of the Bill—namely, the benefit for the first child. It does not seem from what the right hon. Lady said that the benefit will do much to help overcome wage-push inflation. Will it help those who are demanding higher wages in order to keep up with inflation to find that their income is being transferred from the husband to the wife, as appeared to be the case from what the right hon. Lady said this evening? Will the families themselves in total be better off? Is it only a transfer of resources in that what is now paid in tax relief to the father will be paid in child benefit direct to the mother?
Will there be any new money coming into the scheme, or is it based on what the Treasury call revenue neutrality or some such bureaucratic expression? Is it to be on that basis that the scheme is being introduced? Let us have some more information about that. There would have been more interest on the Government benches and on the Opposition benches if we had thought that the scheme would do something to bring more cash into the hands of the very needy families on low wages, and particularly those who are on supplementary benefit.

9.25 p.m.

Mr. David Penhaligon: I sometimes think that we could save this establishment a great deal of money if we held debates on social services in one of the Committee rooms. It would reduce the amount of light and heat required. Indeed, we would look rather cosier if we sat somewhat nearer to each other than is the situation here with the few hon. Members who seem to be interested in this general subject.
In my short political career I have noted a great deal of opposition to the

whole idea of family allowances. I think that most hon. Members must have experienced that feeling at one time or another. There is without doubt a substantial body of public opinion against large families. Indeed, I should have to give that sentiment substantial support. But the suggestion that people increase the size of their families to rake in the benefits of the family allowance is one of the funniest arguments that I have heard advanced at any meeting I have attended.
We do not know what the benefits will be, but, as they are now, the rest of Europe has substantially greater benefits than we have. There is little sign that in European countries the increased family allowance greatly increases the size of families.
The real point about the Bill, as has been mentioned several times, is that for the first time for a very long time we have an attempt at tackling poverty within the family. The Liberal Party has long argued that this is the easiest and most effective way to do something about the problem.
We are delighted that in future the first child will have an allowance. I suppose that I should declare an interest, being the father of a two-year-old son. But I know from my friends and my own experience that the first child, when the wife stops working, is probably the biggest shift in a family's financial position that is experienced for many years. It is probably the biggest shift in one's financial position until the great day one retires when instead of bringing home the normal wage, one is on pension. Therefore, the first child allowance will do something to help in that area.
The Liberal Party is more than disappointed to hear that it is impossible to bring this allowance in before 1977. I think that alumina cement has become one of the most useful excuses that Governments of this country have ever had. I have heard it blamed for three things that we have not done in recent months. I understand now that alumina cement has stopped us paying out the allowance for the first child before 1977.
Some of the criticism that has come from this side of the House about the Government not bringing in this allowance until 1977 has raised a wry smile on my


face. The hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young), who has left the Chamber, said that the Government will have taken three years and four months to implement this idea, and therefore, the fact that the Conservatives took three years and eight months not to implement it made the Conservative Government's record as good as the Labour Government's record. The difference is that at least in the three years and four months than this Government have taken they will have brought it in. Therefore, some credit is due to them, at least from the Liberal Party if from nowhere else in this Chamber.
I suggest that there should be a regular review of the benefit. We went from 1970 to 1974 without any change being made in the family allowance provision.
The Child Poverty Action Group has circulated a memorandum—no doubt most hon. Members have received it—asking that the family allowance should be reviewed at six-monthly intervals. I suppose it is a tragic sign of the times that people talk about reviewing benefits at six-monthly intervals. I should prefer the Government of the day to take effective action to stop the inflation which is rotting our society than to review the child benefit at six-monthly intervals. But if the Government will not take action to curb inflation, the Liberal Party must support the idea, sad though it is, of regular reviews to keep the benefit up to date.
It is difficult to make specific comments about the Bill because no figures are attached, but it recognises that as a child gets older he gets somewhat more expensive to keep. As I said, it is difficult to make any comment one way or the other until the figures are before us, but it is at least recognised that as a child gets older the benefit will increase. That is appreciated.
The great thing that the Bill has done is to reduce one of the anomalies that has long annoyed me because I represent one of the poor areas of this country. Sometimes when a Budget is presented the Minister of the day raises the tax allowance. The headline in the newspapers the next day is, "£60 a year for all families in Britain". I know that in my part of the country only too often the people who most need this extra money

pay no income tax and, therefore, the allowance does not go to them at all. Obviously, this piece of legislation will stop that.
What disappoints me is that it will produce another anomaly. The idea of making the benefit tax free sounds seductive, but it means that in real terms and in terms of extra income to a family it will benefit the richer, higher taxpayer much more than the lower taxpayer. If this benefit were taxed, could the Government say by how much they increase the benefit? It would be interesting to know by how much the benefit would increase the income of people who at present do not pay any tax if it were taxed and therefore the money recouped to the Government were redistributed back through the same scheme. The Government say that they want to attack poverty. I should like to know the answer to this question because these are the people about whom I am disturbed and, from what other hon. Members have said, they, too, are concerned about them.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke: The hon. Gentleman has said that the case would be stronger at the moment if the Government could do something about the level of tax thresholds. At present families with very modest incomes indeed are paying tax. Therefore, what he is proposing would hit the extra 1 million poor people who are paying tax this year even harder, compared with last year, as a result of the Chancellor's Budget.

Mr. Penhaligon: What I am proposing could not possibly hit anyone harder. The hon. Gentleman is right when he says that it certainly would not help as many people as it might have helped a few years ago when the income tax thresholds were rather more realistic. To that extent we could say that inflation has removed the problem, but it has certainly removed it in a very cruel way and not a way about which my party is very enthusiastic.
The fact that the abolition of the wage-stop has been slipped into the Bill is to be welcomed. I should like to put on record the Liberal Party's great excitement—perhaps that is too strong a word—our great delight that this ludicrous little rule has at long last been deposited in the right wastepaper bin.
It has been said that apparently this special allowance will be given to the first child of single-parent families and will be counted against supplementary benefits. It is my experience in my constituency—and I rather suspect that all hon. Members have met people in this category—that if this is so and if the clawback is 100 per cent., the people whom I thought we would be helping most will now be missed out. I hope that the Minister will have an opportunity to explain in more detail what the percentage clawback will be or, if it is 100 per cent., perhaps he will rethink it and do something to help those in this category.
This is a good day for this House. It is a day when a reform has been put before us which is much needed and much welcomed. I am pleased to say that basically the Liberal Party supports the Government in what they are doing.

9.33 p.m.

Mrs. Margaret Bain: Most right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken in this debate—I am disappointed that few people have been present—have spoken in terms of the Bill against the background of eradication of poverty.
The Scottish National Party welcomes any move that will eradicate poverty. Only last year we launched a very imaginative policy called "The War on Poverty in Scotland". We drew attention to the fact that 1 million people in Scotland lived on or near the poverty line. Our political opponents pooh-poohed this idea and dismissed it as sensationalism. Yet only recently we have had every statistic that we produced on poverty in Scotland vindicated in reports from sociologists and, indeed, from Government Departments. Most recently the Department of the Environment, in its census "Indicators of Urban Poverty", showed that 115 of the 120 worst areas in the United Kingdom in terms of multiple deprivation were in Clydeside, Scotland.
It is against that background that we welcome the principle of the Bill as it has been put before us today. We agree wholeheartedly with the principle of the benefit on the birth of a first child. This has been part of our election manifestos

throughout the past years. Therefore, we can do nothing but welcome it. I do not need to remind the House of the problems of expense when the first child is born. However, I want to remind hon. Members that it is not merely that the wife stops employment but that the whole tax allowance available to a woman is lost in that situation.
We also approve of the principle that this payment should replace tax relief, because this means that more people will escape the poverty trap and that people with the lowest incomes should benefit from this situation We would welcome frequent reviews of the situation and, perhaps, an index related to the cost of living. However, we realise the problems involved in this matter. We hope that the Committee will examine it in greet detail.
We congratulate the Government on finally recognising the needs of one-parent families. I can only repeat, however, our disappointment as expressed in a motion on the Order Paper that this payment will not be made at an earlier date and will not be a larger sum. Given the decline in the purchasing power of the pound, £1·50 will be virtually meaningless in early 1977.
On the general question of the amount of the child benefit, I hope that when we get round to discussing the amount the Government will produce something much more realistic and perhaps something that will bring us into line with the rest of Europe. Unlike the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler), I do not believe that we need to remain in Europe to come into line in this respect, but that is a matter for another debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Moray and Nairn (Mrs. Ewing) has consistently questioned the Department responsible and asked whether it can produce monetary comparisons of family allowances paid in the United Kingdom with those paid in other EEC countries. Consistently the reply has been that it is impossible to produce such statistics. This interest on the part of my hon. Friend was noticed by certain groups, which sent us their individual calculations. In every comparison the United Kingdom showed up very badly.
Taking this on an annual basis, for two children under the age of five the United Kingdom paid out £46·80 in family allowances, Belgium paid £418·04, Holland paid £271·33 and Eire, which is the closest comparison managed, paid £67·20. I should like the Department to comment on those figures. I am very willing to send a copy of the statistics to the Department for its comments and for other comparisons.
Will the Minister indicate whether the Government intend to abolish the earnings rule as applicable to one-parent families? I realise that there has been the promise that the amount that a one-parent family may earn before the supplementary benefit is deducted is to be doubled at some point in the future. Will the Minister indicate when this will be and whether the supplementary benefit will be deductible against the child benefit allowance to one-parent families?
In general, the Scottish National Party welcomes all these attempts to eradicate poverty among children, or at least to make progress towards that end. Scotland has had more than her share of socially disadvantaged children. I should like to draw the attention of the House yet again to the report "Born to Fail" published in 1973 by the National Children's Bureau. I make no apology for mentioning it again because all those who claim to be interested in the welfare of our children should have the words of this report carved on their hearts.
The report stated:
One child in 16 was the proportion of disadvantaged among all children in Britain"—
that statistic, in itself, is appalling—
but in individual regions the prevalence varied. In Southern England there was only one in 47 children. In Wales and Northern England, on the other hand, there was one in every 12. But the most disturbing proportion was found in Scotland where one in every 10 children was disadvantaged. Eleven per cent. of the 11-year-old British children lived in Scotland, but 19 per cent. of disadvantaged children were found there.
It is against this background that we welcome the Government's moves, and it is this particular aspect of the Bill that I am particularly interested in.
The SNP also welcomes the abolition of the wage-stop. The Child Poverty Action Group stated in 1972, following some extensive

research on the operation of the wage-stop that
There was evidence of considerable financial hardship and in most cases very real deprivation. This is only to be expected, since the families were having to manage on a sum of money officially defined as inadequate to meet their basic needs.
I accept that the numbers of people coming into the wage-stop category have fallen quite substantially owing to the administration of the family income supplement and rent rebate and allowance schemes. However, it is true to say that we all welcome and approve the abolition of this most detested part of the whole supplementary benefit scheme, but I am very disappointed that it has not been extended to the cohabitation rule, which is undoubtedly unjustifiable in the circumstances.
On the whole, however, we welcome the principle of this Bill and hope that when the Committee meets it will get down to the administrative details of the matters involved and make this a very meaningful law on the statute book.

9.42 p.m.

Mr. Ted Leadbitter: It must be understood by the Front Bench that any criticism at this stage of this proposal in the Bill is intended to be constructive. If it appears to be a little heavy because of the lack of information in the Bill, that is only in order to use the time which is now available between the processing of the Bill through Parliament and the dates when the orders in council are issued to take heed of certain warnings.
At the end of the day it will not be very useful to those who are in receipt of family allowances or of social security benefits for their families now, or indeed for one-parent families who come within the interim period, if the statutory instruments brought before the House produce nothing different in terms of financial improvement compared with the situation today as far as the purchasing power of the money they get is concerned.
If that should happen, two things would become obvious to the recipients of these benefits. First, they would see that we are just using another name for the same thing. Secondly, they would draw the conclusion that the operation of Clause 17—and this does not appear generally in


publicity and will not appear in future, because it is past experience—will mean that the gains they have had in terms of social security benefits will be reduced by the amount of benefit they receive for the first child.
We have to accept in the House that the people who are receiving benefits are not lawyers and are not necessarily professional people, who, as a matter of fact, can live without the benefits at all. The people receiving them are ordinary people with problems which are proportionately higher, in terms of income to meet their cost of living, than those of the affluent sections of the community. If they are getting money now, or between now and 1976, which is the interim period, or between 1976 and 1977, which is the period for putting into effect the whole of the scheme, and they are still no better off, they will inevitably draw the conclusion that Parliament once again has used another name for the same sort of thing.
It is no use getting rid of family allowances and introducing child benefits if in terms of what people receive the situation is no different.
Why has the Bill been introduced at this point when the country is anxious hear about another subject, namely the economic crisis? Why bring in a Bill like this now when it will not get news coverage, so that those who are directly concerned will not feel the full impact of the Government's good intentions? I do not prejudge those intentions. I merely warn. The Bill need not have been introduced now. There is no one in the House or in the Department who knows what the benefits will be. There is no possibility of evaluating the Bill. We cannot say with certainty, once the Bill leaves us, what validity the benefits will have by the time we come to deal with the statutory instruments. Major changes may be required because of changing circumstances.

Mr. Alec Jones: Surely one-parent families will know, as a matter of fact, that from next April they will receive £1·50 a week which they are not receiving now. That has nothing to do with any long-term plan.

Mr. Leadbitter: I would remind my hon. Friend that that is not the position.

Such families may well know that in 1976 they will get the interim award of £1·50. I would call it a derisory award. I do not think that that would get me by taxi to King's Cross and back. We ought not to shout too loud about £1·50. If my hon. Friend says that these people will know what they will receive in 1976, there are three consequences flowing from that. The first is that the purchasing power of that money will not be the same next year as it is today. Second, the value of the money will have been eroded before they get it. Third, if such people are receiving supplementary allowances, Clause 17 says that what they are to get will be reduced accordingly so that they will in fact get little more.
We could tell the country that the Government intend to pay the one-parent families by April 1976 or thereabouts—because the date is not specified—simply by making a public statement to that effect. That is quite different from producing a Bill which might have to be altered. This is perhaps why the House is so empty. May be this is one of the reasons why hon. Members with some experience can see that this measure may well have to be re-examined in the context of the economic conditions of 1976. If £1·50 is simply the amount of money that will take me to King's Cross and back by taxi, it will not bring great wealth to one-parent families.
I see in the Explanatory Memorandum that this will cost only £21 million. Is Great Britain so poor that she cannot pay that now? That is a pertinent question. That is exactly the amount of money we spent on food subsidies to keep Hovis and other companies happy to hold down their prices for a very short period. We gave to the shareholders of the bread producers £21 million for a very short-term holding of prices. So are we saying that we cannot afford to give one-parent families the £1·50 now at a similar total cost?
If we want to have our priorities right at a time of economic crisis when we have not yet got control of inflation, I should have thought that my party above all parties would have said that the major priority here is to protect the families in the most vulnerable section of the community, the poverty area. It is a priority now. I should not have thought


that it needed a Bill. It could have been done.
This is a pertinent criticism which the Department may well not like, but I recall a great Secretary of State for the Department of Health and Social Security, who was then responsible for pensions, trying to urge upon the House and upon the Labour Party not so many years ago the need to pay a pension in a short period of time because the urgency was there. It was real, and everybody recognised it. But the Department advised the Minister that it could not be done. Subsequently the pressure of public opinion, to which the House of Commons responded, made it possible to implement the payment of the pension in double-quick time, when the will was known to be there. Similarly here, if there is an urgent need to deal with this very special area of one-parent families—and my party has made some play on it—do we have to take 12 months? Do we need a Minister to come here with a Bill which says quite clearly and distinctly that the soonest it is expected that this can be paid is April 1976? What sort of expectation is that? What am I to say to my constituents during the coming months, with the pressures of inflation putting up prices to a greater extent than the £1·50? Am I to say, "Wait until next April for it"? Am I to say that it is "expected" to happen in April but that it is not a firm promise? Am I to say that they may get the £1·50 then, remembering that it is being eroded all the time, even while I am talking to them? That is not the kind of situation that brings credit to my party. I say this in the House of Commons deliberately.
Coming to the matter of family benefits, again to be expected a year after that for the one-parent child, it is to be observed that we cannot find out in any way from any official, what is to happen. The fact is that they do not appear to know the value of these benefits. If they know and are not telling us, that is wrong. They cannot have it both ways.
We know one thing for certain. We know that the cost of implementing the scheme is to be £10·5 million a year and that there will be an additional sum of £6 million involved in its immediate

implementation. We also know that we shall have to employ 3,500 additional civil servants on the scheme. We know that part, but we do not know the amounts involved. We know exactly the number of civil servants needed to implement a scheme about which we know nothing.
My colleagues on the Treasury Bench may say that their hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool is making a much more critical examination of the Bill than some more kindly members of the Opposition. But it is right that that should be so. It is my party which is introducing it. This is what the Labour Party manifesto said. We gave our word that it would be done. As a Member of Parliament, however, I do not like to be told about implementing a scheme the cost of which has not been evaluated. I cannot go to my constituents to tell them exactly what they are to get. What is more, I cannot say exactly what they are not to get.
For more than a decade, we have been talking in this House about simplifying our taxation system. Here we have a situation where we are to pay out a disgraceful pittance and the people who will be paid far more for administering the scheme will be tearing out their hair wondering how to cope with the complications of tax regulating and how they are to measure out the clawback.
It is a fanciful notion in a modern society to say that we intend to give this so-called child benefit but that we intend to claw back some of it, bearing in mind that we have no conception of the criticism which will be made of us when we receive irate people who have had great expectations from our manifesto promises.
I have dealt with Clause 17. If no one else is prepared to say it, I must repeat that the clause says clearly that the people who will be getting £1·50 will also be subject to a provision in the Bill which says that it will be given with one hand and taken away with the other. That is what will happen. It happens all the time. It is not just a Labour Government who are doing it. All Governments have done it. However, in practice, Members of Parliament have to try to explain this anomaly to their constituents, because it has never made sense to ordinary people.
I wish to make only one final point. I want to leave my colleagues on the Treasury Bench with some feeling that all their work has been worth while. My comment relates to Clause 18. The Government have decided to abolish the wage-stop, which is a welcome move. But again I ask why it cannot be done now. Why cannot the Government say to the Social Security Commission, "We want this abolished immediately"? It is based on a man's normal work, but the great shake-out in industry means that a man's normal work will cease to be his normal work. While he is awaiting his retraining—

It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Ordered,
That the Child Benefit Bill may be proceeded with at this day's Sitting, though opposed, until Eleven o'clock.—[Mr. Pavitt]

Question again proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Mr. Leadbitter: The Bill is welcome, but it falls short because it does not deal urgently with an urgent problem. It ends the wage-stop, a step which is welcome and overdue. The Department has done a first-class job in making its intentions known, but I hope that during the coming year, as we approach the interim payment for one-parent families, followed in a subsequent year by the implementation of the scheme, the dates will be reviewed. I hope that the Government will take account of the criticism that this benefit should not be just a new name for an old idea. It must transform poverty and bring a sense of justice to the needy in a fast-moving society, who depend 100 per cent. on the common sense of this House bringing the reality of our manifesto to bear on the Government's good intentions.

10.3 p.m.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke: Like almost every other speaker, I express a welcome for the Bill, but after the scathing attack upon it by the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Leadbitter), I cannot be accused of unfairness if I say that our welcome is particularly qualified.
What is being welcomed is the structure in the Bill which will give future Governments the opportunity to begin to develop the kind of child benefit and family endowment scheme that we all want. As many hon. Members have said, the structure at the moment is an empty shell. We do not know whether the Government will put their money—or rather, our money—where their intentions are professed to be in the Bill. We do not know the level of benefits or what the reality will be when the Scheme is introduced.
The hon. Member for Hartlepool asked a pertinent question—why is the Bill being introduced now? I can offer one explanation—that this Government are rapidly acquiring a deplorable record over family poverty, which is getting steadily worse day by day in the middle of the present crisis, so they have produced a Bill full of good intentions for the future. Those good intentions should not be allowed to be a fig leaf for the fact that they are presiding over a great increase in family poverty.
The structure proposed by the Bill is one on which we are all agreed, because it has an impeccable all-party parentage. It is taken almost completely from the Tory tax credits scheme debated in the last Parliament. It is a desirable feature of that scheme. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler) said, we regret that the Secretary of State's opposition—presumably her personal opposition, since she was alone in her attitude on the Select Committee which considered the scheme—prevents us from going further.
There is no reason why similar enabling legislation should not be brought in to put into effect the outline of a tax credits scheme. We accept that in such legislation the actual figures would have to be worked out later as in this Bill, as one discovered what the resources would

allow the Government to do in a time of crisis.
Meanwhile, the structure is this desirable amalgamation of family allowances and tax allowances. It has the desirable effect of extending the payments made direct to mothers to cover the eldest child. We have always been committed to this. When we were in Government we were committed to introducing this payment for the eldest child and paying it direct to the mother.
The Labour Party has been committed to it as well, and has made it part of the social contract, which might well have doomed it to oblivion along with most other parts of that illusory document. Fortunately, it is the one part which seems to have survived.
We are producing a worthwhile structure which will enable us to fill an important gap in the system. The worst gap in our system of family provision has always been that the eldest child was not covered. Almost half of all children are the eldest child or the only child. As the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mrs. Bain) reminded the House, in nearly everyone's experience the most expensive child for any household is the first child. There is no need to emphasise that point.
Having welcomed the structure and said how glad we shall be to see it get on the statute book, we must turn to the questions posed by the Bill which have been referred to by all hon. Members who have taken part in the debate. Those questions are the amounts we shall see in the end, the timing and meanwhile the delay that we are experiencing before the scheme is brought into operation.
The Bill has to be seen against the background of mounting family poverty. It is all very well for the Secretary of State to take great credit for the good intentions contained in the Bill. I could almost accuse her of speaking in sanctimonious terms, in heart on sleeve fashion, about her great concern for family poverty and how glad she is to bring forward this legislation.
When one looks at what the Government are doing rather than what they are saying, it is apparent that the failure of the social contract and Government policy on inflation are hitting the poor


in particular. The social services are not protecting the poor. The Chancellor in his speeches is now beginning to talk about the threat to the social wage, which is obviously worrying members of his own party and indeed those interested in public life everywhere.
In many ways the social wage, in real terms, is already being hit by Government measures. The Government recently increased the family allowance. I give the right hon. Lady credit for that, although it does not take it back to the real value it had in 1968. Before she bounces up to say that we did not raise it at all, I must point out that we introduced the family incomes supplement, which is the most important provision one-parent families have. It is used most by them. One-parent families in work find that it is probably their best safeguard at the moment against real poverty.
Unfortunately, alongside the increase in the family allowances one has to look at the Chancellor's failure to raise tax thresholds, which has hit many families—not only those of modest means but those who are poor. In this Budget, at a time of raging inflation, no increase has been made in the child tax allowances. I trust that that has not been done to keep down the cost of introducing this measure when we get to 1977.
As a result of the Chancellor's activities, a million more people are now paying tax than when the Labour Government came into office. The people most badly affected are large families with low earnings. The Child Poverty Action Group, which many hon. Members have quoted, has done extremely valuable work. I trust that it would do as good a hatchet job on a Conservative Government's record if we blundered into the same mistakes. It has done valuable work in relating the increased earnings which people have had to have in the terms of the social contract, or in order to keep pace with prices and earnings over the past year, as well as the increased family allowances, to the increased level of tax which all poor families are paying. It has shown clearly that the real living standards of low-earning, large families, have dropped and are still dropping.
I quote one table from Mr. Frank Field's Child Poverty Action Group memorandum showing the net income changes of a two-parent family earning £25 a week in April 1974. If such a low-income family's average income had risen in line with average earnings it should now be £33 a week. But the effect of the increase in family allowance and the increased tax that such a family is paying is that if it has one child it is £228 a week worse off; with two children it is £1·83 worse off; and with three children it is 93p worse off. That is the valid background against which to judge the Government's lack of figures in the Bill and the fact that we are to wait until 1977 before the Bill will mean anything.
Let us look at what the Bill does, and how it will affect poverty and whom it will help. First, I welcome the abolition of the wage-stop, which my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams) also warmly welcomed. The time has arrived to abolish this rule. When we were in office, as a result of our family income supplement scheme and the rent rebate and allowances resulting from the Housing Finance Act, the number of people affected by the wage-stop dropped dramatically. I am glad to hear that only 5,000 people are now affected and that the wage-stop will soon be removed.
There are those who fear that the abolition of the wage-stop will take away a precaution which prevents people being better off in benefit than they would be in work. But it is an extremely ineffective and unfair precaution. It has dwindled to a point where it is not worth pursuing for the 5,000 largely low-wage-earning families with numerous children badly affected by it.
For the rest, we must start looking at the amounts, which cannot be specified in the Bill, because the Secretary of State is waiting until she sees what resources she has in 1977. In view of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's warning words, that is very wise. One cannot help saying that her difficulty is that so much was done for pensioners in the uprating last year, and so much is proposed for them in the future, that the Government no doubt have restricted


financial resources for other worthwhile social services improvements.
Family allowances, at £1·50, have not gone to the 1968 level in real terms. The Secretary of State estimates that if the Bill is to have neutral cost in 1977, £1·94 is the break-even point. I hope that the Under-Secretary will confirm that nobody will be worse off in 1977 than he is now, and a benefit of that level implies a child benefit of more than £2 a week. Perhaps the Under-Secretary has some idea what figure it is.
If the hon. Gentleman says that we are being too suspicious about the amounts, that we are suspicious that the Government are professing noble intentions to get over their lack of action now, I remind him of what my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) said, that the White Paper on Government expenditure makes no provision for increased expenditure in this area. My hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Boscawen) also pointed this out.
Therefore, we need an assurance that no one will be worse off. We also need as soon as possible an indication of where the Government think that they will get public money from if the payment is to be anything other than a purely neutral transfer from the husband to the wife, from tax allowances to family allowances.
Meanwhile, whatever the amounts, one point that will have to be considered in Committee is why the child credit system should not be made subject to the annual review. Neither party has ever been able to accede to the pressure in Committees to include family allowances in the annual review. Years and years have gone by, including years when a Conservative Government were in power, in which the family allowance has been steadily eroded. We still have not returned to the real level of seven years ago. Now that we are amalgamating tax allowances with family allowances, it is difficult to justify a situation in which these new child benefits will be kept out of the annual review procedure. I should be interested to hear what arguments the Government will produce at an appropriate stage to try to resist inclusion in the annual review procedure so that whatever figure is chosen at least keeps in line with inflation thereafter.
But in the light of what I have said, particularly about what is happening now in respect of family poverty, the acceptance by the Government of April 1977 as a suitable time for introducing the new scheme is almost disgraceful. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield explained, and it was not denied, that April 1976 was implied and accepted by the Secretary of State only a few months ago. Every hon. Member who has spoken in the debate, including the hon. Members for Welwyn and Hatfield (Mrs. Hayman), and Stockport, North (Mr. Bennett)—and I do not take party advantage of their reasoned speeches—has expressed disappointment at the April 1977 date.
We find ourselves bogged down in almost ludicrous argument about high alumina cement, in Washington New Town, County Durham. In all the arguments we have had in pressing the Secretary of State for statements about the timing of the new scheme, it is remarkable how in deus ex machina fashion, high alumina cement has suddenly arrived to provide the Government with, much to their expressed regret, a quite practicable excuse for not being able to introduce the new benefit before 1977.
I am sorry that the Secretary of State repeated several times that it is impossible to introduce it before that date without mentioning the other problems that were authoritatively reported in New Society and The Guardian, amongst other journals, only a few months ago. In Cabinet Committee, in particular in the so-called anti-poverty group that the Government have apparently established, there have been great battles between the Secretary of State and her colleagues, particularly her Treasury colleages. The result was, and we believe that this lies behind the delay and the Government's marked lack of enthusiasm in searching for office accommodation, that the Secretary of State was refused the resources by her Treasury colleagues to implement the scheme before 1977.
I suspect that there is very little agreement between her and the Treasury about what this scheme may mean and that this is the principal reason why no benefit level is stated for 1977—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State laughs, but I will hear what the Under-Secretary says about the position within the Government. I


cannot believe that if resources were available, if the party were prepared to honour its election commitment, and if the Treasury and the Secretary of State were agreed, they would still have been unable to include figures in the Bill and that we would be told that high alumina cement at Washington New Town has prevented the scheme from going ahead.
The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment has not been very forthcoming in reply to parliamentary Questions about this great office block at Washington. He will not produce any architects' reports for the House to examine, although he told me on 12th May in a Written Answer that the delay caused to completion of the block was likely to be "about 12 months". To be told that it might be "about 12 months" implies that it might be more. If the delay is longer, will the scheme be pushed back beyond April 1977? Are the Government trying to tell us that there are no other office blocks within reasonable range of the highly skilled people in County Durham who, it seems, are so indispensable to the Government? Are they saying that with the best will in the world the Government and the House of Commons united cannot find an answer before April 1977?
The example of Germany has been quoted in respect of getting new benefits quickly into effect. The Secretary of State explained how she found on her visit that the German experience was quite unsuitable for this country, and she has tried to explain that to the House before. However, her defence and explanation of that view seems to many of us to show how utterly wedded the Secretary of State is to the old-fashioned features of our social security scheme, so that when she sees a modern scheme being applied in an up-to-date industrial country she believes that it cannot be done in the dear old United Kingdom.
She has made particular reference to how in Germany payment is made monthly or even quarterly, and how utterly unacceptable this is in the United Kingdom with our once-a-week payments. In my opinion the day will come, if we are ever to modernise our social security system, when we shall have to start thinking about abandoning the payment of the once-a-week benefit, with the little lady

going to the post office on a Tuesday to collect her money as an indispensable feature of the system. If we are to begin to approach the level of administrative efficiency and, hence, effectiveness in social terms, of the much better Western European systems of social provision, these are the terms in which we must begin to think.

Mrs. Castle: Desirable as these long-term objectives may be, is not the hon. Gentleman contradicting his own earlier demands for urgency? Secondly, does he think that it would be possible in this country in the near future to introduce payment by cheque, as in Germany?

Mr. Clarke: As regards urgency, the Germans were able to pay family allowances for the first child within six months. On the second point, of course benefit cannot be paid by cheque now. The Secretary of State implies that that is and ought to be the situation and that there should be no attempt at progress or to try to explain to the public that the fact that we have not accepted the use of the banking system of cheque payments is a serious limitation. That applies to many areas as well as to social services provision.
The Government mention delay, which we find inexcusable. I do not say that the Opposition disbelieve their comments. There is a problem at the Washington office block in County Durham. We believe that with the political will and some real urgency in the matter, payments under the scheme could be made by 1977.
I shall deal with the interim benefit for one-parent families. I shall not tease the Government—that was done effectively by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield and my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams)—with the fact that they voted against this recommendation on 29th January 1975 yet have now brought it forward for adoption. The Government have adopted this measure as a sop because of their failure to introduce the main scheme for everyone by April 1976 as they originally intended. The interim scheme is open to serious disadvantages. Although we shall not oppose its introduction in 1976, we are relieved that the proposal will stand as an interim measure for one year only.
The hon. Member for Welwyn and Hatfield pointed out that the fact that supplementary benefit would not be disregarded meant that the scheme would be of no assistance to the poorest families, those one-parent families, about whom we are most concerned and who are the cause of the urgency. Anyone who receives more than £1·50 in supplementary benefit now will not be one penny better off. It is only the one-parent families not receiving that level of supplementary benefit who will enjoy an advantaged position.
I accept the point that there is some difficulty in disregarding every new benefit for supplementary benefit, but for one year there can be no great objection in principle to disregarding at least part of the new benefit so that those poorest one-parent families will receive help in the fairly near future.
The hon. Member for Stockport, North made the point that if we make special provision for one-parent families in advance of the other families we shall introduce another application of the cohabitation rule into the social security system. That will presumably be one of the major administrative problems of the new interim benefit system. I do not think that we can abolish the cohabitation rule so long as there are benefits which are not payable to married couples or married women. There must be lone-parent or single-parent benefits paid to people who are genuine lone parents and genuinely single parents. We cannot pay a level of benefit to unmarried people which is not given to those who are married. In practice that would be unpopular and difficult to apply. However applications of the rule should be kept to the minimum. It is unfortunate that the effect of the interim sop of a new benefit payable to one-parent families will be to introduce another cohabitation rule into the system.
Let me look ahead beyond the interim measures to when the scheme is operating and deal finally with one problem that will arise for all future Governments when the child benefit scheme is implemented. We have all accepted that one effect of amalgamating the tax allowance system with the family allowance system is that the take-home pay of men will be reduced so as to increase the independent family income of their wives. It

may well be that that is just about all the Bill will achieve. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington said, what will result if no funds are forthcoming is a mere transfer. The House should brace itself for that and try to accept it. We have all accepted it in principle. We must accept that in many ways it is a good thing and get on with phasing in that change as rapidly as possible. I do not relish a long period of phasing out tax allowances because no one can bring himself to accept the short-term unpopularity which might result if the change is not explained properly to wage-earners.
It was not too far-fetched of my hon. Friend the Member for Wells to suggest that the Government might think of playing about with the scheme as a consequence of the timing of an election. It is not altogether unlikely that 1977 will be a pre-election year. I trust that there will be no delay in beginning the phasing out of the tax allowance scheme because in a pre-election period the Government cannot contemplate reducing men's take-home pay.
We are used to putting on the pay slip what a person is actually getting and not what he is not getting, other than the tax deduction. It would be helpful to give a weekly notification to the husband of the amount of child benefit that he is earning. Something should be done to show him that his family income is not falling. Most women welcome the family allowance because of the degree of independence is gives them over one part of their housekeeping money and because they are assured of direct access to it on a particular day of the week. This independent income for the wife may help to overcome the wider problem that many men who receive considerable wage and salary increases do not adjust quickly enough to giving their wives an increased housekeeping allowance. That is a matter which we can contemplate in the future. It is a pity that the future is so far off and that we do not know how much money we shall be talking about.
At least that ultimate objective is shared by both sides. We are talking about means and timing and not about the ends. The main end that unites the House is the desire to eliminate the embarrassing and ugly level of family


poverty that still exists in this comparatively prosperous country. That common desire enables us to reach complete agreement on the broad principle of the Bill and to give it an unopposed Second Reading.

10.28 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. Alec Jones): During the whole debate and in almost every speech the Government have been pressed either to do more or to implement the proposals more quickly, and sometimes to do both. My right hon. Friend and I welcome such pressures from inside the House and from bodies outside. When properly applied, those pressures act as a catalyst and help to speed up improvements in our social security provisions. Jointly, we can do as much as possible as quickly as we can and that, in the words of the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke), is the common aim.
The Bill is another important improvement in our social security provisions. It is in line with our manifesto commitments and it is in line with the promise we made to the people. It is another of the promises which we have kept. The manifesto said that we would introduce a new system of child cash allowances for every child, including the first, payable to the mother. I was glad, therefore, that almost without exception the Bill received a general welcome and the approval of the House. At least, I hope that it will receive the approval of the House. Now that the Opposition have decided that they will not officially vote against it there is a reasonable chance that it might receive a Second Reading.
The whole purpose of the Bill is to provide help for children. As such we have chosen to sustain families as units. It seems to me that the family as a unit is an important part of our social structure. It is necessary that when we examine the Bill—and having listened to all the speeches and heard the various suggestions put forward, it seems that we shall have an active time in Committee, although I hope a short time—we do so against a certain background. I would not like to say that I would welcome with enthusiasm on the Committee all the hon. Members who have spoken to

night, but fortunately the choice is not in my hands. I believe that we should examine the Bill against the background of the considerable programme of social security legislation which we have already carried through. Even now certain proposals are entertaining the hon. Member for Rushcliffe and myself and a number of other hon. Members in Committee.
Another part of the background is the massive increase in the workload for our Department. I know that there is a considerable temptation to refer constantly to bureaucratic inefficiency or difficulty, but I must say, having spent a considerable time in the past six months visiting our local offices and regional offices throughout the country, that it would be extremely unwise for any Government not to take fully into account the work which, in the main, is carried out loyally and faithfully by our staffs in local offices. When the House passes legislation, that does not make even one benefit payable. The benefit is paid only when our local office staffs have done their work.
I invite the House to consider what we have done and the extent of the burden which our staffs have accepted in the past 12 months or so. We had the uprating in July. It was the fastest up-rating of all time. That was followed about seven months later by a further uprating in April. We had the first family allowance increase since 1968 paid out in April of this year. We have seen the first change in supplementary benefit disregards since 1966. We have had minor improvements and changes to deal with such as beef tokens, the extended £10 Christmas box and changes in the heating allowances, apart from the new benefits for which we have already legislated and which are now in the pipeline waiting to be implemented.
Bearing in mind that background, when my right hon. Friend was confronted with the physical impossibility of implementing the child benefit scheme any earlier than 1977 and the size of the programme which she had in hand, I think it would have been fairly easy for her to take the easy way out. She might well have been forgiven if she had decided to let the matter drop in its entirety. However, my right hon. Friend decided that was not to be her course of action.


She immediately said "Who are the hardest hit families?" The answer came clearly from all quarters of the House, and certainly from organisations outside—namely, the single-parent families. My right hon. Friend sought to find some way of giving some help to those hardest hit families, and she came up with the idea of giving them the equivalent of family allowances for the first child? That is why the child interim benefit was devised. I accept that the child interim benefit is a modest scheme. It is inevitably so. Nevertheless, it means an extra £20 million in the pockets of one-parent families. That is not what we would have liked to do, but it was certainly not to be ignored.

Mr. Kenneth Clarke: If the Under-Secretary wants a direct answer to his question—who are the hardest hit families in this country?—does he accept that they are probably the one-parent families who are totally dependent on supplementary benefit for their income and that they are not being helped one jot by the Government's proposals?

Mr. Jones: The hon. Gentleman has forgotten the extent of the supplementary benefit increases which we have brought about. Indeed, he was a Member of the Committee when we discussed these matters. The hon. Gentleman knows full well the arguments used by hon. Members to the effect that the doubling of the disregards would bring about this sort of help to one-parent families. To suggest that nothing has been done is nonsense, and the hon. Gentleman is fully aware of it.

Sir B. Rhys Williams: When will the doubling of the disregards take effect?

Mr. Jones: We have already announced that we hope to implement it later this year.

Sir B. Rhys Williams: indicated dissent.

Mr. Jones: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman does not agree. It is a question of trying to fit these things into a programme which makes sense to administer and carry out. It is all very well for the hon. Gentleman to shake his head, but it cannot be done merely by

decisions in this House. It has to be physically implemented by our staff.
My right hon. Friend in opening the debate said that I would give some further details of the interim benefit.
Who will qualify for this interim benefit? The answer is all one-parent families, except those already receiving a social security payment which allows for the fact that family allowance is not payable for the first child—for example, the widow receiving the widowed mother's allowance which already has a specially enhanced benefit rate for the first child. Such a widow's allowance is already £5·65 for the first child and £4·15 for additional children, thus allowing for the £1·50 difference for the non-entitlement to FAM for the first child. It is estimated that about 500,000 people will be within the scope of this interim benefit, of whom 100,000 are men who are the heads of one-parent families.
Within the overall total of 500,000, over 200,000 families are in receipt of supplementary benefit. I understand why a number of hon. Members have therefore made the plea that the interim benefit should be disregarded for supplementary benefit purposes so that these families should gain a financial advantage. But that ignores the fact, as I mentioned earlier, that we have made considerable increases in supplementary benefit to one-parent families in last autumn's increase, in the April uprating, and in the treatment of disregards.
I sympathise with that approach, but I must tell the House that to introduce such a disregard would be alien to the Government's overall policy of trying to reduce dependency on means-tested benefits. We want to see fewer families dependent on means testing. In the eight years that I have been a Member of this House I have seen successive Governments try to face this dilemma. If, every time we introduce a new benefit as of right, part or all of it is to be disregarded for the purposes of supplementary benefit, no progress will ever be made towards reducing the supplementary benefit scheme to its original purpose—namely, to provide a safety net for the family in exceptional or crisis situations.
Moreover, it therefore follows that since the interim benefit in effect extends the advantage of family allowances to the


eldest child in one-parent families, there would be at least as strong an argument to disregard part of the family allowance itself as to disregard the interim benefit.
Finally, there is the point that the benefit is an interim benefit until 1977, when it is subsumed within the larger child benefit scheme. I do not believe there is any suggestion—at least, I have not heard such a suggestion from the Opposition—that part of the child benefit in its final form should be disregarded for supplementary benefit purposes. But even with no disregard for supplementary benefit purposes, there remain over 250,000 people who will gain from the new interim payments. These are mainly single-parent families where the head of the household is in work. Here, of course, the largest benefit will go to the 45,000 families not in receipt either of family income supplement or of supplementary benefit but whose incomes are below the tax threshold.

Mr. Leadbitter: I have listened to my hon. Friend's arithmetic. Is he saying now that instead of the 500,000 people he mentioned who are to benefit from the interim payment in 1976, only 250,000 will actually benefit? Does he mean that the remaining 250,000 will be no better off because of the lack of disregards?

Mr. Jones: I thought that I had explained—I do not know whether my hon. Friend was present—that the numbers who will benefit from this particular interim payment will be about 250,000 people. But those receiving supplementary benefit will not benefit directly from this payment. However, we have already increased the supplementary benefit, as recently as April this year, and there is a further increase in supplementary benefits to come. That further increase will be in payment to those supplementary benefit cases even before this interim payment is made.
Several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler), my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn and Hatfield (Mrs. Hayman) and the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young), stressed the need for some provision for uprating the child benefit.

Mr. Norman Fowler: Before the hon. Gentleman comes to that matter, I assume that he will be dealing with a point that has been made by the Opposition on a fair number of occasions? He has waxed eloquent about the advantages of this interim benefit, but precisely why did 275 hon. Members of his party vote against it two months ago?

Mr. Jones: If the hon. Gentleman wants an answer to that question, he may find it desirable to refer to the parentage of the amendment that was tabled on that occasion.
I want to comment on the fact that the Bill does not incorporate provisions for regular review of the child benefit rate. Some hon. Members have read into the absence of such provision sinister implications for the future of the scheme. There are no such implications. The reason for there being no review is quite simple. There is provision in Clause 5 for the child benefit rate to be fixed by regulations subject to affirmative resolution. It would be under this affirmative resolution provision that the benefit would be up-rated as necessary.
This provision goes beyond the present family allowances legislation, in which there is no provision at all for changing the rates and main legislation is needed for every uprating. In fact, it puts the child benefit on an equal footing with supplementary benefit and family income supplement, which can be uprated by regulations but have no provision for formal regular reviews. In our upratings of supplementary benefits and FIS we have quite clearly shown that we are prepared to use those regulations without any formal legislative review procedure.
The Social Security Act 1975 lays down formal provisions for annual review of benefits paid under that Act and requires uprating of those benefits in line with earnings or prices as appropriate. We do not propose that there should be anything similar for child benefit because it is a totally different kind of benefit, fulfilling a different purpose.
In the first place it is a new kind of benefit—a hybrid, which amalgamates a social security benefit with a tax allowance. In the second place, most of the people receiving it will be people at work,


and the benefit will simply form a tax-free addition to their earned income. In this it is totally unlike benefits such as pensions which form the main source of income of those who receive them. For these reasons it would not be appropriate to apply to child benefit the same sort of review provisions as run for straightforward social security benefits.
This does not of course mean that we shall leave the child benefit rate unchanged any more than they have been left unaltered in recent years. It will be raised from time to time in the light of inflation and other developments. But just as neither family allowances nor child tax allowances are subject to the rigid pattern of upratings that has been evolved for social security benefits nor will their successor benefit be.
I can understand rather more easily the criticism coming from my hon. Friends about the need for some legislative reform for uprating than I can when it comes from Conservative Members. I invite them to look at the record of family allowances since they were introduced in 1946. Tory Members may or may not be surprised to know that despite all the years when they were in power, family allowances were increased only twice. There was a time lag of eight years from 1956 to 1964 during which period there was no uprating and a further period from 1970 to 1974 when again there was no uprating. It ill becomes Conservative Members to suggest that we are somewhat laggard.
I wish to refer to the cohabitation rule as it applies to the child interim benefit. This is a subject which has been touched on by many hon. Members. I mention the subject and how the benefit will be administered particularly because there was an article in the Sun on Wednesday 30th April headed:
Big New Sex-Swoop Warning".
which suggested that what the paper called "sex snoopers" would be sent to check that lone parents were not cohabiting. That sort of wild exaggeration does not help anyone. It may sell a few more papers but it cannot do any good for those having to face the problem.
I am glad to provide an explanation which I trust will be a reassurance. Explanatory leaflets and claim forms for

the interim benefit will be in post offices from the beginning of January next. That might help my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Leadbitter)—I am sorry he has left the Chamber—about the date of implementation. All the information that will normally be required to decide an entitlement will be on the claim form.
The initial books will be issued by our network of local offices to run from 6th April 1976, and responsibility for the continued running of the scheme during the year 1976 to 1977 will then pass to a special unit at our Blackpool Central Office which will handle through the post all subsequent claims, and notified changes of circumstances. Of course, cohabitation will be a disqualifying circumstance since it would be both counter to the purpose of the benefit and grossly unfair to pay it where a man and woman are living together in the same circumstances as a husband and wife. Obviously if one of a couple—whether married or not—attempted to claim as if they were a one-parent family, we would have to react in a responsible way to such a fraudulent claim. But home visiting will not be part of the system, as I have already explained, and there will not therefore be the type of inquiries on the sort of scale envisaged by the newspaper report and possibly feared by my hon. Friend.
Account has to be taken of the fact that the interim benefit is designed for one-parent families. If there are couples living together, either inside or outside marriage, obviously such a pair cannot at the same time be living together as a couple and as a single-parent family.

Mr. Penhaligon: I asked about two single-parent families living together as man and wife who did not get the family allowance because each had one child. Will they still be excluded from this benefit?

Mr. Jones: I think I should want notice of that before being able to give an authoritative answer as to the kind of treatment that would be appropriate in such a case.
When we talk of this problem of cohabitation, I know, as do most hon. Members, of the difficulties which are bound to arise in operating this provision.


That is why I wanted to remind the House that the Supplementary Benefits Commission is currently reviewing the operation of the cohabitation rule, and the Secretary of State has asked the Commission to consider the desirability of any changes in the relevant provisions of the Supplementary Benefit Act.
I was also very pleased to hear the general support given for the decision to abolish the wage-stop. I was sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool seemed to think that we did not need an Act of Parliament, and that I needed only to wave a magic wand to deal with this matter. We did need this Act.
I am glad that it excited the Liberal Party. I have never seen the Liberal Party excited on anything before. It was quite an amazing sight.
I think that the major justification for the abolition of the wage-stop is that whereas in 1970 there were some 35,000 claimants, now with the family income supplement increases, also announced at the same time, that number will be down to under 500 people. This is the figure I have been given, and I am quite staggered. It is 5,000 at this present moment, but with the implementation, so I understand, of the family income supplement increases, that will be even further reduced. It therefore seems a nonsense to keep this sort of provision on the Statute Book when it only causes distress to many families desperately in need. I assure the hon. Gentleman that it causes more distress to members of the staff who have to operate it.
The hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield made some references to the tax credit scheme and claimed some parentage for it, as others have done from time to time. I will not argue about that, except to say that the idea of amalgamating family allowances and child tax allowances was contained in a Labour Party document in 1969. Be that as it may, if the tax credit were introduced at the level necessary to fulfil the sort of social aims behind the original Green Paper, that would be sufficient to float some 800,000 old-age pensioners off supplementary benefit. To introduce a tax credit scheme now which would do that would cost £3,000 million.
The hon. Gentleman was doubtful about my right hon. Friend's claim that the tax credit scheme would remove only one of the means-tested schemes. I have checked this, and I understand that family income supplement is the only means-tested benefit which would be replaced by the tax credit and that 44 means-tested schemes would still apply. I say that to confirm what my right hon. Friend said.
The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of the advertising of family income supplement. Obviously we shall continue that.

Mr. Norman Fowler: I shall not take up the further matter which is referred to in the Select Committee's Report. We are not seeking to persuade the Government to initiate the scheme straight away. We understand that it will cost a great deal of money. But we want them to declare in principle their agreement to the tax credit scheme, for the reasons that I have given. If it has also a Labour parentage, is not that another reason why they should do it?

Mr. Jones: The part that we are proud to claim is that contained in this Bill. However, I shall not pursue that further, because I have still a number of matters with which to deal.
One of the major criticisms made by a number of hon. Members concerned the timing. It was practically impossible for my right hon Friend to introduce the child benefit scheme, as she wanted to, any earlier than 1977. The building problem itself prevented it. If the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield believes that these physical difficulties did not exist, I suggest that he visits the site and carries out an inspection of the high alumina blocks for himself. It is time that this ghost was laid to rest. Of course, there are all kinds of other difficulties involved in trying to implement a scheme of this kind, but the accommodation problem turned out to be insuperable.
The hon. Gentleman asked specifically about widowed mothers. The widowed mother will get child benefit for all her children, but it will not affect her total benefit income because of the adjustments between child benefit and social security child dependency benefits.
The hon. Member for Rushcliffe and others asked what was the level of benefit. Obviously it is not possible and not desirable to announce today the level of a benefit which is to be paid in 1977.
I conclude by repeating some words of a countryman of mine, James Griffiths, who said when he introduced the family allowance:
… in the future all of us who take part in the passing of this Bill, who vote for it and help to improve it, will have reason to be proud of the fact that we have done something for the child life of this nation which will redound to the credit of the nation."—[Official Report, 8th March 1945; Vol. 408, c. 2290.]
That may be considered a piece of Welsh exaggeration. If so, perhaps I may make another piece of Welsh exaggeration and say that this is a measure which is part of our development of a coherent policy in family support, and one which, as a Government, we are proud to have the opportunity to introduce.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

Orders of the Day — CHILD BENEFIT [MONEY]

Queen's Recommendation having been signified—

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to replace family allowances with a new benefit to be known as child benefit and, pending the introduction of that benefit, to provide an interim benefit for unmarried or separated parents with children, it is expedient to authorise—

(1) the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of—

(a) the sums required by the Secretary of State for paying child benefit;
(b) the sums required by the Secretary of State for paying interim benefit to unmarried or separated parents with children of a weekly amount equal to the rate for the time being specified under section 1 of the Family Allowances Act 1965 as the weekly rate of allowance under that Act for one child;
(c) fees and allowances to members of any tribunal constituted under the said Act of the present Session and to any person appointed under that Act, and

allowances to persons attending before such a tribunal or such a person;
(d) any expenses of the Secretary of State or of any other government department in the administration of that Act;
(e) any increase attributable to that Act in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under any other Act;
(f) any sums for giving effect to financial adjustments made under provisions of that Act authorising reciprocal arrangements or agreements with Northern Ireland and with countries outside the United Kingdom;

(2) Payments into the Consolidated Fund.—[Mr. John Ellis.]

Orders of the Day — REFERENDUM ORDER

11.0 p.m.

The Minister of State, Privy Council Office (Mr. Gerry Fowler): I beg to move
That the Referendum Order 1975, a draft of which was laid before this House on 8th May, be approved.
This order applies the statutory machinery for holding the referendum on 5th June. It is made under Section 1 of the Act which received Royal Assent last week. In addition to substantive provisions, it applies all the necessary parts of the Representation of the People Act, Parliamentary Election Rules and the Representation of the People Regulations, modified where necessary in accordance with the principles set out in the debates we have had on the Referendum Act. The wording of this order has been made available since 7th April, when the White Paper on the order was published.
Since then there have been two important changes which have had to be taken into account. This draft contains provision for special arrangements for voting in the Forces and a new provision for arrangements for counting votes by counties, and in Scotland by regions. Otherwise, this is substantially the same as the earlier version, on the basis of which returning officers have been making preparations.
I shall not trouble the House with a recital of the fuller contents of the order which are essentially technical, but I hope I shall be able to answer questions on technical points at the end of the debate. I hope that the House will be prepared to approve the order and thus complete the statutory provision for the referendum.

11.2 p.m.

Sir Michael Havers: This debate is, I suppose, the last sad act of the Referendum Act. It is not my object to commiserate with the Government on the consequences of what followed from the Act but to seek assurances from them, without in any way seeking to make political capital. My questions are on matters which have caused some anxiety and I hope that the Minister will be able to deal with them.
The first is on absent voters and proxies lists. Regulation 30 of the Representation of the People Regulations 1969 says,
the registration officer shall, on request and without fee, supply to each candidate or his agent a copy of the absent voter's list
and this applies also to those on the postal proxy list. I do not see any provision for that in this order. It is important that those who may be canvassing should be provided with lists of those people so that they can carry out an essential part of their duty. I am not seeking that this order should be changed. It is too late for that. But some provision should be made so that those who have postal or proxy votes may be known to canvassers.
I come to the power of observers under Article 5 of the order which provides for
the appointment of persons to observe the verification of the ballot paper accounts and the counting of the votes.
It must be made clear that mere passive observers at the count are not enough. They must be observers who are able to take an initiative at the count and not merely to watch. They should be able to say, for example "That ballot paper has a four letter word and 'Down with Benn' instead of a cross". They must have power to take initiatives to deal with circumstances such as that at the counting. That is not in the order, and I hope that some assurances will be given that provision will be made for that.
This fits in with consultation at the count, because the returning officer, in taking a decision on a dubious vote, is under an obligation to consult one of the agents from each interested party represented at the count. It may be that I have missed it, but there appears to be no obligation in the order in this respect, because there will be no candidate or election

agent. There should be powers for those present, however they may be appointed, to require the returning officer to consult them before deciding, in what would otherwise be a unilateral way upon dubious votes.
The observers will be chosen in a way that I do not understand, particularly in areas where there is no umbrella organisation. It may be that the returning officer himself will appoint the observers from the two umbrella organisations, but there may be circumstances in which one or other is not taking an active part in a particular constituency. Is the returning officer himself to be responsible for appointing the observers? What will happen in those areas where neither umbrella organisation is campaigning? I imagine that Keep Britain in Europe or, in its absence, the Conservative Party associations, will blanket the country, but on occasion there may not be an observer to be appointed from the other side. It is right that everybody should be represented among the observers, and I should like to know how the returning officer will deal with that problem.

11.6 p.m.

Mr. David Steel: I certainly reject the idea that, in the absence of a Keep Britain in Europe local association, the Conservative Party association would do. That is an extraordinary piece of arroganc, of which I hope that we shall hear no more during the referendum.
On the point raised by the hon. and learned Member for Wimbledon (Sir M. Havers) about Article 5, I have been asked locally who will appoint the people concerned at local level. Where do MPs fit it? The order does not specify that MPs will automatically be entitled to verify in the polling stations and at the count, although we understand that that is the Government's intention. Curiously enough, MPs are allowed for in the detailed schedule dealing with declarations of secrecy. That should have been written into the order, but perhaps the Government will be able to say something about that. I hope that they will also say something about the appointment of those concerned.
It is very odd, but I suppose part of the oddity of a referendum, but the provision on page 5, relating to modifications


to Section 82 of the Representation of the People Act—
Right to use certain schools and halls for meetings at parliamentary elections".
—appears to provide that any member of the public who wishes to secure a "Yes" or "No" vote, which must include virtually everybody in the country, is entitled to use a school or hall. I find it difficult to believe that that is the intention. Is this nonsense completely unavoidable? If so, we must hope and pray that the public at large do not realise it.

11.9 p.m.

Mr. John Roper: We are on uncharted ground, and those involved in the campaign will find it difficult to be sure of a number of matters. When will the Minister announce the arrangements for the appointment of people to act as observers? Will the same people have to be appointed as observers at district level for the verification of votes as at county level for the counting of votes?
People may well be available in the evening to be present for the verification of votes, but not on the following day for the counting. Therefore, if it is thought appropriate, I hope that it will be possible for different persons to be appointed as observers for the verification and for the counting stages. I realise that the detailed provisions are not in the order, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is given powers to make these arrangements, and we should like an indication of what is in his mind.
In Article 7 there is a reference to the regulations which the Secretary of State will be empowered to make with respect to voting by members of the forces. When are the regulations likely to be made and to be laid before the House?
Reference has already been made by the hon. and learned Member for Wimbledon (Sir M. Havers) to the supply of the lists of proxy and absent voters. Will my hon. Friend the Minister say something about the supply of registers to the two sides in the campaign? As far as I can see, no explicit provision is made in the order to amend the normal provisions for parliamentary elections.
One must ask whether disputed ballot papers should be taken to the level of the

chief counting officer to adjudicate upon them with the national agents of the two sides, though it would delay the result. We should like advice on the matter.
Rule 51, on page 13, makes provision for a recount. It says:
Before the counting officer makes any public accouncement concerning the numbers required to be certified in accordance with section 2(6) of the Referendum Act 1975 or certifies the numbers so required, he shall consult the Chief Counting Officer who may, without prejudice to any other directions which he may give, direct the counting officer to recount the ballot papers.
Does that mean that it is impossible for the counting officer for any county to declare the result for that county until the results from all the counties are known and the need, or otherwise, for a recount becomes established?

11.13 p.m.

Dr. Edmund Marshall: Like others who have already spoken, I should be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister of State would give us more information about the arrangements to be made under Article 5 for the appointment of observers at the count. I note that the wording in Article 5(1) has been changed from the original draft, to include as two separate operations the verification of the ballot paper accounts and the counting of the votes. Does it mean that the two operations will take place in two places, or will all the votes for a particular county or, in Scotland, region be gathered together before the verification stage?
Reference has been made to appointing observers who might be nominated by the umbrella organisations. Even in those parts of the country where the umbrella organisations are fully active, they are still not the complete British people. There are many other people with no connection with the umbrella organisations who are very interested in the outcome of the referendum, and who might also appreciate the opportunity to be present at some of the counts.
The possibility of Members of Parliament being present at counts has been mentioned. Now that counting is to be done at county level in England and Wales and at regional level in Scotland, the members of those local authorities might be considered as suitable people to be appointed as observers.

11.15 p.m.

Mr. Ted Leadbitter: I am not sure what Article 5 means since it is exceptionally brief and it omits certain points. For instance, does the appointment of persons to observe verification of the ballot paper include any advisory comments on exclusions of people who would normally feel qualified to observe? That aspect is exceedingly vague. Postal votes are often dealt with at a separate count. Is provision made here for observers at that separate count? It would appear that the intention is that there should be, but it is not clear and I hope the Minister will indicate whether that is the case.
There is nothing in the order to give guidance on who the observers shall be, what their qualifications and standing shall be, whether political parties should be excluded and whether office holders in those parties should be included by virtue of their office.
The remaining articles deal with modifications to the Representation of the People Acts, but according to page 13 of the order the initiative for the declaration of the result appears to be in the hands of the chief counting officer. In this context, is there any guidance about when a recount would be undertaken? Those of us with experience of parliamentary elections know that usually there is a mutual understanding in different areas between the parties about the disparity which should warrant a recount. In this case it would appear that only one man can decide. Is there any guidance on this point, or will the matter rest with one man?
Is the Minister satisfied that the order covers sufficiently the anomalies involved in voting by post and proxy? I am not clear about the question of the Armed Forces, for instance, although I do not want to spend any time on that. I spoke on that subject at some length on the last occasion, and I hope that the Minister will indicate that the points raised then have been taken into account in framing Article 7.

11.19 p.m.

Mr. Ivan Lawrence: In General Elections in the normal course of events at many of the counts there are public galleries from which people not connected with the count can watch

the proceedings. They have no function, but are there out of interest. In the past returning officers have been able to exercise a certain control and influence over this matter. Will the public be admitted under these rules?
It is not immediately clear that they will, even in the discretion of the verifying officer. Rule 45 on page 11 says,
The verifying officer may limit the number of observers present at the proceedings so that the proportion of observers to his assistants is one observer to two assistants.
It looks as though the observers mentioned will be observers of the polling procedure for purposes of verification. I am referring to members of the general public who might wish to view the count from the gallery, so as to be near their friends, relations, councillors and so on.

11.20 p.m.

Mr. Gerry Fowler: The hon. and learned Member for Wimbledon (Sir M. Havers) asked me a series of questions about who would have access to the absent voters' list. Advice will be going out that those who have charge of the absent voters' list—the returning officers in normal elections—should give access to that list to anyone who asks bona fide. I refer to a person who approaches the returning officer saying that he represents one of the two campaigning organisations or who, for some other reason connected with the referendum wishes to see the absent voters' list.
The appointment of observers will be in the hands of returning and counting officers. The advice is likely to be that they should accept observers nominated by the local branches of the two umbrella organisations. However, they have very wide powers. They may appoint whomsoever they wish to be observers at the count.
Perhaps I should deal with several other questions simultaneously. In a sense I have already answered them. It is entirely up to the local returning and counting officers as to whom they accept and how many people they accept. They will have to take account of local conditions. It would be pointless to say that there should be general access for the public, albeit in a gallery, in a hall of a restricted size. On the other hand, if there is plenty of room I hope that, since this is part of our democratic machinery,


returning and counting officers will not be too restrictive. But they, and they alone, can judge the local circumstances.

Mr. Leadbitter: This is a matter of vital importance. The House will regret it if we do not spend time on this.
Past experience has shown that many returning officers do not take local circumstances into account in the manner mentioned by the Minister. On many occasions political parties have had to press, according to their interpretation of local circumstances, their requirements for the count and for polling station provision. I wonder whether the Minister will be precise. When he says that local circumstances should be taken into consideration, does he mean that local opinion—the views of important sections of the community in which the count is taking place will be taken into account? How can local circumstances be taken into account other than by the interpretation of an individual?

Mr. Fowler: I should be surprised if the returning officer in Hartlepool did not take into account the opinion of my hon. Friend if he stressed it with that vigour. I am sure that it would be a valiant returning officer who resisted that pressure. I hope that returning and counting officers will take local views into account. However, I stress, as we did so often in the debates on the referendum, that we hope that we shall stick in the referendum as closely as possible to the well-tried and well-used procedures with which we are familiar in General Elections. If returning officers are familiar with those procedures I am sure that they will exercise their discretion to ensure that there is the maximum democratic participation.

Mr. Lawrence: There is a confusion in my mind, which is not resolved by the document, as to what is meant by "observers". In an election the local government officials who count the ballot papers are watched by persons whom I understand the order refers to as "observers". That is why Rule 45(3) says that the proportion of observers to assistants is one observer to two assistants. The observer is the person who stands by the table and watches the two assistants sorting the ballot papers. That takes no account of the general observer, not necessarily on the floor watching the

counting of votes but in the public gallery. The Minister says that the rules are plain, but no distinction appears to be made between those two kinds of "observed".

Mr. Fowler: I was coming to the hon. Gentleman's point which he has now made twice. When he referred to Rule 45(3) in his original intervention he quoted it accurately and used the words "may restrict". That is the key.
I come back to what I said about local circumstances. If there is no gallery and no room, the returning or counting officer may restrict the number of observers to the point which is specified in the order. The word "observers" in the order includes what those of us who are familiar with electoral practice call counting agents, and observers in the public gallery. Where there is a public gallery and where there is space, there is no reason why a returning or counting officer should not admit members of the general public, subject to the normal checks which are applied by the order.
I was asked by the hon. and learned Member for Wimbledon who appoints observers. By the terms of the order the returning or counting officer appoints observers. I hope that he will take account of nominations from the two umbrella organisations. The hon. and learned Gentleman also asked what happens if there is no umbrella organisation. The answer has to be that because he has wide powers the returning or accounting officer will be able to appoint whomsoever he thinks fit in the absence of nominations. I hope that returning and counting officers will see fit, where there is no local branch of an umbrella organisation, to nominate those whom they think represent the particular viewpoint within that area.
That is the best I can do here. It is like asking what happens in a General Election to the interests of a certain party when that party is not contesting a seat. The answer is that that party is not represented at the count. We can only rely—as I am sure we can—on the good sense of returning and counting officers.
The hon. and learned Gentleman wanted to know whom the counting officer consults with regard to possibly spoilt papers. We hope that where there are local branches of the umbrella organisations and those organisations are


represented at the count, they will be able informally to appoint a leader who will act in the way in which an agent normally acts in a General Election. Many hon. Members who have agents will be familiar with the procedure. Others who do not will be familiar with the procedure whereby they may themselves have to look at the spoilt paper or decide at the last moment with the returning officer whether a paper is spoilt.
I freely confess that this is not an ideal arrangement. It cannot be an ideal arrangement, simply because there are no candidates in a referendum. We hope that returning and counting officers will seek to encourage local organisations to nominate for the count a leader who may play the part played by an agent in a General Election.

Sir M. Havers: It is clear from what the Minister says that there is a degree of informality which is probably inescapable in an operation of this kind. As the conduct of the poll may be influenced by the report of this debate, may I seek the hon. Gentleman's assistance also in making clear to returning officers that observers—those on the floor, not those in the gallery, because they are two different classes—should be able to draw the returning officer's attention to any thing they see which they consider to be of importance—for example, a vote which is going into the wrong pile or something like that?

Mr. Fowler: I can give the hon. and learned Gentleman that assurance. No restriction will be placed upon observers who are acting as counting agents, if so I might call them, beyond what would be placed upon them at a normal election count.
Since the hon. and learned Gentleman has said that much of the guidance will come from tonight's debate, let me assure him that Sir Philip Allen—we are delighted that he has accepted the task of acting as chief counting officer in the referendum; we are grateful indeed to him that after carrying the burden of Permanent Secretary in the Home Office for many years he has agreed to do this—will be issuing guidance to counting officers throughout the country. I hope that what I say tonight, where I am talking

not about the precise contents of the order but about the guidance which may be issued under it, will not be taken as the last word, because I am sure that Sir Philip Allen will wish to qualify and certainly to spell out in greater detail some of the things I have been saying.
If I may now turn—

Mr. Leadbitter: Before my hon. Friend leaves what he is now saying—

Mr. Fowler: Before my hon. Friend, who has already spoken and intervened, intervenes again, perhaps before leaving the question of observers I may deal with the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Farnworth (Mr. Roper): whether the same people must necessarily be observers at the count and at the verification of the ballot. The answer is "No". In many places they will be the same, in others they will not. That is entirely up to local circumstances and, again, to the decision of the local returning and counting officers.

Mr. Leadbitter: I want only to be helpful. While a degree of discretion is laid upon the chief counting officer, would it not be a good idea that, since before the count starts the observers will be known, they should nominate from themselves representatives to carry out the normal functions which take place at an election of dealing with questions of spoilt papers, postal votes and the rest?

Mr. Fowler: That was exactly what I was saying a moment ago. We very much hope that where there are efficient local branches of the umbrella organisations which are represented at the count, they will nominate a representative from among themselves to perform exactly those tasks.
I have been asked one or two other questions about the verification and the count. My hon. Friend the Member for Goole (Dr. Marshall) asked whether the verification and the count would be at the same place. The answer is "No". In general, in England at least, the verification will take place within the districts. The ballot boxes—not necessarily the same ballot boxes, because the ballots, having been verified, may be put into a smaller number of boxes—will then be transferred to the place where the count will take place at county level.
My hon. Friend asked whether anybody could go to the count, including councillors, and the hon. Member for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (Mr. Steel), asked about the position of Members. Members will be able to go both to the verification and to the count. No special provision is made for councillors, but again it is entirely up to the local returning officer and the local counting officer whether they should admit councillors—whether county or district, or regional or district in the case of Scotland—to the count. Again, the returning officer's view will no doubt be formed by local circumstances.
I was asked whether disputed ballot papers should all go to the chief counting officer. The answer has to be "No". If that were to happen, I fear that the referendum would last for weeks after 5th June. That is a prospect that one could not readily contemplate. The chief counting officer will be holding conferences with counting officers throughout the realm and he will be issuing advice. Most of the counting officers will have years of experience of judging what is and what is not a spoiled paper from local and general elections. We have every faith in their judgment.
Finally, I turn to the question of a recount. It was suggested that it might not be possible for a local counting officer to declare his county result, regional result, GLC result or result in Northern Ireland before a recount has either been called or not been called, as the case might be, and that it could not occur until the national result was in. The counting officer will be able to declare the local result but it will, in a sense, be a provisional result. If it were then necessary that there should be a national recount, it might well be that there would prove to be some local variation in the result as originally declared. We hope, however, that results locally will come through on the Friday and on the Saturday after the referendum so that by early or mid-evening of the Saturday after 5th June we should have the final national result. I think that we all keep our fingers crossed and hope that there will be no recount.

Sir M. Havers: I am slightly anxious about that distinguished civil servant Sir Philip Allen going off on his own, in

a sense. The Minister has said that he will not be bound by our discussion tonight. However, the House has to approve the order, and I hope very much that when Sir Philip considers the rules that he will send out to the various returning officers he will bear in mind the views expressed by the House tonight. Some of those views have been raised almost repetitively by a number of hon. Members. I hope that Sir Philip will not suddenly make some change as a result of the Minister saying that he will not be bound by what is said tonight.

Mr. Fowler: I can assure the House that Sir Philip will be bound hand and foot by the provisions of the order once the House has approved it. I am sure that he will take full account of everything that is said in this debate. Some points, as the hon. and learned Gentleman has said, have not only been made but made and made again. I am sure that they will not escape Sir Philip's notice. I commend the order to the House.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: I understood the Minister to say a short while ago that he expected that some of the local results would be announced before it was known whether there would be a recount. I may have misheard him, but that was what I thought he said. If so, I find that difficult to reconcile with revised Rule 51 at the foot of page 13, which appears to say:
Before the counting officer makes any public announcement"—
that is, concerning the result—
he shall consult the Chief Counting Officer who may … direct the counting officer to recount.
The natural meaning of those words is that there will be no local announcements until in each case the chief counting officer has cleared the result, as it were, on the question of a recount.

Mr. Fowler: May I, with the leave of the House, reply to the question? I am almost timid about saying it of the right hon. Gentleman, but I think that the right hon. Gentleman has misunderstood the provision. He is confusing the possibility of a local recount with the possibility of a national recount. What is suggested in the provision to which he draws attention is that the local counting officer shall clear the local result with


the chief counting officer. Of course, as I have repeatedly said to the House when we have been debating the referendum, the local result is of no significance although some will attribute a significance to it. It may be because some wish to attribute significance to it that there will be a call for a local recount irrespective of and long before there is any national result. At that point the local counting officer may wish to consult the chief counting officer, and there may be a local recount. However, that has little to do with the horrendous possibility that there may have to be a national recount which, irrespective of whether there had been a local recount, would entail a recount in every area of the country.

Mr. David Steel: Earlier the Minister said that Members of Parliament would be admitted to the counts. However, the order does not so state. Is this to be the Minister's instruction to Sir Philip Allen and downwards to the returning officer?
Secondly, the hon. Gentleman did not deal with my question about the use of schools and halls.

Mr. Fowler: If the hon. Gentleman rereads the order, he will find a Rule 45B:

"(1) The counting officer shall make arrangements for the counting of the votes.
(2) No person, other than the counting officer and his assistants, the Members of Parliament for constituencies wholly or partly within the area … observers and other persons permitted by the counting officer may be present at the count."

The order, therefore, makes provision for Members of Parliament to be present at the count.
The hon. Gentleman was perfectly correct about school halls. We hope that there will not be frivolous bookings of school halls and the like. We come back to the point that I have already made. Candidates are not involved. Therefore, it is exceedingly difficult to put one's finger on a person, or that person's agent, as we do at General Elections, who shall be solely entitled to and responsible for certain functions.

Mr. Roper: Before my hon. Friend sits down, I wonder whether he would reply to the questions that I asked. First, when will the regulations under paragraph

7 dealing with the Armed Forces be made? Secondly, will he tell us about the supply of registers to those involved in the referendum campaign?

Mr. Fowler: We have already said in debates on the Bill, now the Act, that it would be far too costly to supply registers on demand free of charge. The normal provisions will apply. Anyone who wishes to purchase a register will be able to do so. Members of Parliament are entitled to registers at a reduced rate. I assume that most hon. Members are committed one way or the other. Therefore, I doubt whether there will be any acute difficulty about the supply of registers.
I assure the House that the order fulfils in toto the undertakings that were given in the debates on the Act regarding voting by members of the Forces. I think that there is little further to be said about that. The order, together with the provisions of the Act, provides that all members of the Armed Forces, save those who are under the water for three weeks at a time, or whatever it may be, may vote in the referendum. It also provides that existing proxies for members of the Armed Forces shall be cancelled so as to eliminate the possibility of dual voting.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Referendum Order 1975, a draft of which was laid before this House on 8th May, be approved.

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. John Ellis.]

Orders of the Day — GOVERNMENT CHEMIST (LABORATORY)

11.44 p.m.

Mr. John Stradling Thomas: Students of the Hardman Report on the Dispersal of Government Work from London will be particularly interested in this debate. I am delighted to see that there are a few stalwart Members who have this interest at heart and are present tonight. They will also be interested in the earlier report of Sir Gilbert Flemming in 1962–63. This is


a subject which has exercised the mind of Government for some time. Tonight it is concerned with the relocation of the laboratory of the Government Chemist.
I suppose that there will be those who find this very important institution in our Civil Service as strange as possibly the Official Solictor was to us some years ago, but none the less the Government Chemist exists and does a very important job of work.
My particular interest in the matter dates back at least to 1972, when there occurred on the borders of my constituency an event which was met with great dismay, for reasons that had led to the loss from our community of a very large number of highly talented people and of job opportunity, too. It was at that time that the fibres division of Imperial Chemical Industries, which operates a large complex, announced the closure of its research facilities at its Pontypool site.
I should like at this point to mention the unavoidable absence from the Chamber of the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) due to a temporary illness. I am sure that all hon. Members will join me in wishing him a speedy recovery.
At that time the hon. Member for Pontypool and I protested very strongly to the company about its decision to remove its research work to Harrogate, where it had decided, for economic reasons, that it had to concentrate all its research on one site. We regretted that decision for the reasons to which I have referred. It meant that although the company was increasing the opportunity for jobs in the factory side, the manufacturing side, job opportunities were being missed for young technicians and technologists, and we were losing something in the social mix because of the high-powered nature of some of the people who had to work in this very complicated area of research.
The hon. Member for Pontypool and I had some very harsh things to say about the company at that time. Arising, I think, partly from that and partly from the reaction of people locally, I am glad to say that a large number of groups—the company itself, the Welsh Office the Department of Industry, the county planning department, local councils and the

trades unions—all worked very well to see what could be done to offset this loss to the area. They had quite considerable success. I pay tribute to all those who took part for the work they put in.
Unfortunately, this did not meet the case. As a result, new job opportunities were created but unfortunately they were largely of a clerical nature. The loss of technical and technological jobs to which I have referred was not made up. As we all know, the Hardman Committee on the dispersal of Civil Service jobs recommended that Newport should be a dispersal area for Department of Industry people. Unfortunately, once again no technical or technological jobs were involved. In the Hardman Report it was recommended that the laboratory of the Government Chemist should be moved out of Central London to Teddington because the Committee took the view—confirmed on page 187 of its report, and in the report of the Government Chemist; Hardman and the Government Chemist seem to have taken the same line here—that
the laboratory … should preferably be located near to another relevant research establishment to enable common facilities to be shared".
The report went on to say:
a location on the periphery of London would be desirable to avoid the need for keeping an outstation in London".
As a result its recommendation was that it should go to Teddington.
In July 1973 the newly-elected Labour Government took a look at the Hardman proposals and set them aside. It was announced by the Lord President in July 1974 that the Government took the view that the laboratory of the Government Chemist should go not to Teddington but to Cumbria. I stress that it is not my intention in any way to rob the people of Cumbria of much-needed jobs.

Mr. Michael Jobling: Hear, hear.

Mr. Stradling Thomas: I am glad to have support for that. I appreciate that no doubt the people of Cumbria have problems of a similar nature to those of my constituents. They badly need to get the benefit of dispersal as recommended by successive Governments.
I draw the attention of the Minister to the fact that I have tabled Questions and


written to him but that I am not at all satisfied by the answers I have received. I took up the matter with the Secretary of State for Wales in September 1974 and in December of that year he wrote to me as follows:
However, it has been decided that the Laboratory should be re-located in Cumbria and this decision was announced by the Government in July as part of our dispersal package".
No reason was given why this particular department should go to Cumbria. I followed that up with a Question to the Under-Secretary of State for Industry, the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) and asked whether in view of the Government's decision it would be necessary to construct new laboratories or other new facilities. He replied that the problems in volved in moving the laboratory of the Government Chemist to West Cumbria were still being examined and that it was too early to say what facilities would be required but that new construction might well be required.
In a letter of 18th April the Under-Secretary of State for Industry, the hon. Member for Rutherglen (Mr. Mackenzie), who is replying tonight, replied to a letter of mine.
In my letter I asked four questions. I asked:
What site or sites in Cumbria has the Government got in mind?
The reply was:
The Government has no specific sites in mind at the present time. Following its decision that the Laboratory should be re-located in West Cumbria there have been discussions with the local authorities who are now preparing information about a number of sites which they regard as suitable.
I asked
What existing facilities are available?
The reply was:
I understand that the sites being considered by the local authorities are mostly 'green field' sites, although the possibility of utilising any appropriate existing building is not ruled out.
We come now to two complicated matters which I hope the Minister will clear up because I do not wish to make a great issue of them. I asked:
How many scientists, technicians and support staff will be required?
There seems to be some confusion over the figures. In his reply the Minister said:

The current staff of the Government Chemist located in the London Laboratory is 453 in total.
In the Hardman Report there is reference to the lower figure of 330 to 358 depending on the receiving location. There has been continuing confusion about this. I understand that the number of staff has increased, due to extra work. I suspect that some of the confusion may have arisen from an impression whether we are dealing entirely with the staff in London at Cornwall House or whether, on some occasions, we are including staff in out-stations in this country and abroad, including the Far East. But since the number of people involved has a bearing on the matter, I should like to get this cleared up.
Finally, I asked him what additional facilities will have to be provided, and his reply stated that the laboratory of the Government Chemist requires modern laboratory facilities of some 20,000 square metres. I checked with his office whether a point had been misplaced, because I have ascertained that the present Cornwall House premises on the other side of the river are about 140,000 square feet. This seems to be an enormous expansion to about 215,000 square feet.
This is where the site at Pontypool comes in. There is, in fact, standing in Pontypool an empty laboratory. The people have gone to Harrogate and to other places—mainly to Harrogate, through the reorganisation by ICI Fibres Limited—and standing there are some very good and very high standard laboratory facilities. In addition to that, if there is future expansion by the Government Chemist, apart from laboratory facilities of admittedly less than 215,000 square feet there is an additional building next door with considerable facilities, including air conditioning, of 145,000 square feet. On the question of size and accommodation for staff there can be little if any doubt that these premises exist.
We are living through a time of economic crisis. There is great gloom as to the condition of sterling. There is much talk of cuts in Government expenditure. It seems to me that in such a situation the saving of candle ends is very important, and the best estimate that I can obtain—this is very difficult because laboratories can be built to various specifications—is that to build a laboratory


on a greenfield site in West Cumbria would cost at least £6 million. That would be a very large candle end, in my view, and well worth the saving in the present economic state of this country.
I put it to the Minister that the Government should look once again at their decision. I stress—and I cannot overstress—that, coming as I do, from a rural area, I do not wish to rob West Cumbria of much needed jobs. I stress that the removal of the research department from Pontypool has robbed the area and left a great vacuum. It is sad to see a facility such as this left unused and that at a time of economic crisis the government should be contemplating the expenditure of £6 million when I have the assurance of the company that they would be more than ready to agree to very generous terms because they very much wish not to rip out the laboratory facilities, which, in my view, would be a complete waste.
Finally, I should like to draw the Minister's attention to this point. In the Hardman Report, and in the view of the Government Chemist himself, in his 1972 report, the present high efficiency and effectiveness of the laboratory service to the Government Departments could be impaired if it were to move further away than about one hour's travel from Central London.
The fact is that West Cumbria is 4½ hours from London—that is, by fast train to Carlisle. Pontypool is two hours by train. There is a good motorway and a good railway. In addition, high-speed trains are now travelling from Paddington to South Wales and Bristol.
I put it to the Minister no higher than this. The case I have put to him tonight certainly means that the matter merits at least further inquiry. I would ask him not to turn it down, but to put it up once again and to take a good look at it, because it seems to me that it would be a shocking waste to leave those laboratory premises empty or to convert them into offices at considerable cost and then to spend £6 million elsewhere. Cannot other means be found to help West Cumbria, so that these offices may be taken up to avoid the waste that will be involved in adhering to the present policy?

12 midnight.

Dr. John A. Cunningham: I am grateful for this opportunity to intervene briefly in this Adjournment debate. I understand the concern of the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Stradling Thomas) for his constituency, and it is very commendable that he should raise the matter as he has. However, it is a matter which was the subject of a Government decision almost a year ago.
The decision to relocate the laboratory of the Government Chemist in West Cumbria—and I stress that it is West Cumbria and not Cumbria—was fundamental. There has never been a Government Department of any kind in the old county of Cumberland and, together with it, the old county of Westmorland which now forms the Cumbria authority area. There have been no civil servants' jobs in the area. In this sense, it was a fundamental decision.
In making the decision, the Government were conscious of the need to expand the spectrum of employment opportunities in the area, and I campaigned strongly for this decision and welcomed it when it was made.
The second point is that progress has already been made in implementing the decision. Meetings have taken place, and the local authorities in Cumbria have provided briefs on different sites about education facilities, housing, and so on, so that the staff affected by this relocation can be in no doubt not only that they will be welcome in one of the most pleasant areas in the United Kingdom but also that the authorities there are giving thought to matters which will concern them.
My noble Friend the Minister of State confirmed to me recently in a letter that further progress was soon to be made on this decision, and I look to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to confirm that this is so.
If there is any criticism to be made of the decision, it is that the Government have been rather slow in implementing it. As I said just now, almost a year has elapsed since the decision was made, and those of us, like the hon. Member for Westmorland (Mr. Jopling), who are interested in the matter and represent the area could, with justification, say that we


look for more progress in this matter and not for a reconsideration of the decision.
The hon. Member for Monmouth is reopening the issue because he looks to his constituency, but in South Wales there are already a very significant number of Civil Service jobs available to the community. He sees facilities there, and he looks at a Government decision and raises the matter when, in effect, it is already well progressed—not well enough for my satisfaction, but far too well for the Government to consider again what should happen.
I hope that my hon. Friend will confirm, therefore, that the laboratory will go to West Cumbria and assure me that no further delay will be countenanced in the matter.

12.4 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. Gregor Mackenzie): I want first to commend the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Stradling Thomas) for the way in which he has drawn attention to a subject which I recognise to be one of considerable local importance to him. It goes without saying that the Government need no reminding of the problems of South Wales. We have far too many of our colleagues and, from time to time, Opposition Members reminding us of South Wales, and the problems of employment there, for that to be necessary. We are always conscious of them. May I say to the hon. Member how grateful I am for what he said about my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool (Mr. Abse) who has been concerned about this matter and has indicated to me his concern in this debate.
The heart of this debate is the importance of transferring to the regions more of the decision making. In this, industry and Government both have an important part to play. The Department of Industry have a rôle in encouraging industry to relocate in the assisted areas. The Government, in respect of their own rôle as employers, have shown their determination to make their contribution by dispersing the work of Government Departments. Tonight we are talking about one unit of that dispersal—the laboratory of the Government Chemist.
The hon. Member reminded the House that the Hardman Report recommended that the laboratory should be on the periphery of London. In this way it concluded that the whole of the staff of 358 at that time could be moved. A location such as Teddington, near the National Physical Laboratory, would be the most suitable and would enable any facilities to be shared.
However, the House will remember that my right hon. Friend, the Lord President, said on 30th July in relation to the Hardman recommendations on dispersal that some 7,000 posts from the Ministries of Defence and Overseas Development will go to Glasgow. A similar number from the Ministry of Defence and other Departments will go to Cardiff and Newport. Some 4,500 jobs will go to the North West Region, the bulk of them to Merseyside. The headquarters of the Property Services Agency, some 3,000 posts, will go to Teeside, while the laboratory of the Government Chemist will move to West Cumbria.
This is a big dispersal exercise, the biggest undertaken in peace time, but the problem about any scheme for dispersal is that there is no one right answer. It is quite impossible to satisfy everybody. The Conservative Government commissioned studies under Sir Henry Hardman of the possible pieces of a dispersal jigsaw and where they might be sent to. The report of this study was published in June 1973. The Hardman Report itself offered three solutions: an "efficient" solution, a "regional" solution and a compromise "recommended" solution. The recommended solution would have left one-third of the jobs in the South-East region and only just over half would have gone to assisted areas.
This Government were determined to follow up the Hardman study—after a necessary period of consultation—by taking decisions and getting the detailed work of planning and execution well and truly launched. We were also determined to get better value from the whole operation by ensuring that a greater proportion of the jobs were moved to assisted areas where they are most needed. During the consultation period there was, not unexpectedly, a great deal of pressure from assisted areas to secure the benefit


represented by particular bits of the dispersal programme.
We had a number of inquiries from interested local authorities, about a more radical move for the laboratory than the outskirts of London. I do not want to offend by omitting to mention particular contenders but I know that we had representations from Caithness and Sutherland, South Wales, North Wales, Cumberland, Peterlee and many others. Clearly all but one had to be disappointed, however carefully their claims were considered. Clearly, too, there was likely to be a conflict of interest between what the laboratory felt to be its essential requirements for the tasks it has to fulfil and what the various locations felt they could offer.
The hon. Member for Monmouth will realise from what I have just said that the Government have now made a firm decision concerning the relocation of the laboratory of the Government Chemist. It will be in West Cumbria. I would not deny the justification for his attempt to win a new occupant for the premises vacated by ICI Fibres Ltd. in his constituency.

Mr. Jopling: I welcome the Minister's statement that a firm decision has been made that this Department will go to West Cumbria, because that follows the efforts made by me and the hon. Member for Whitehaven (Dr. Cunningham) under the previous Government to get it to go there. But in view of the compelling argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. Stradling Thomas), will he use every endeavour to get some similar technical organisation to fill those premises at Monmouth?

Mr. Mackenzie: I think we can take that for granted. I will come to that later. The Department has always had a conscience about these vacant premises. Our office in Wales asked whether these premises could be used by the Government Chemist but was told that they are not suitable. There are no other scientific blocks of work, unfortunately, in the Department which would suit these premises. But my Department will continue to seek a suitable tenant for those premises.
There are some practical reasons why the premises are less suitable than might appear for the Government Chemist. I

am told—in case the hon. Member thinks that the figures are a mistake, I can assure him that I have checked them—that the laboratory will need 20,000 square metres in the first place, with room for expansion. I understand that the research and development block at Pontypool is only 5,500 square metres, but even apart from that—I know that this will disappoint the hon. Member—in any dispersal scheme there has to come a time of decision.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about the number of staff. The discrepancy he mentioned is a result of staff taken on since 1st April 1972 and does not include the outstation figure.
My hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven (Dr. Cunningham) has been campaigning on this matter for a long time. A preliminary talk has been held with the Cumbria County Council about facilities in the area. There were discussions with the Department's northern regional office, which has considerable experience in the location of industry. While I understand my hon. Friend's concern, which he has expressed to me publicly and privately, that the progress towards establishing the new quarters appears to be slow, he can be assured that that is not so. We are conscious of the need to carry on here. Although there will be little to see for a considerable time, we are expecting to hold further discussions with the local authorities, including Cumbria, about possible sites in the next month. But if we plan to make a success of this transfer, it will have to be done thoroughly.
I say to the hon. Member for Monmouth and, in his absence, to my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypool, that we understand their concern. But what we have suggested in terms of job transfers from Government Departments to South Wales for the future is worth while. Labour Governments have a worthwhile record in regard to South Wales—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Tuesday evening and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned accordingly at fourteen minutes past Twelve o'clock.